


got a fire but you just can't use it

by getmean



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Eugene is an up and coming author and Snafu is basically his drive for the week, Introspection, M/M, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Snafu Finally Gets Therapy: the fic, burgie runs a gay bar, gene is badly dressed, immediate connections, it's all here ladies, snafu is newly sober for like the tenth time in two years, what more content do u need?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:34:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 58,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21526828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/getmean/pseuds/getmean
Summary: The disconnect is painful. I live in parking lots now; kicking around outside with a cigarette while everyone indoors has that warm fucking moment of human connection. Burgie says I’m on the pity parade. My therapist says I’m adjusting. I don’t know who to listen to so I just listen to neither of them.
Relationships: Merriell "Snafu" Shelton/Eugene Sledge
Comments: 79
Kudos: 78





	1. monday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i never really know how best to warn for stuff but please, if you think that reading about addiction and alcoholism in particular might trigger you in some way, just be aware that the topic does feature quite heavily in this fic! i went through a very scary and out of control time in my life a couple years ago that i still deal with today, and this fic is just some harmless catharsis stemming from that, but if you're in a similar situation please do take care

The flight is delayed, of course. The flights are always delayed.

I eat an overpriced ham sandwich in a coffee shop for lack of anything better to do, tucked in between two people with giant suitcases and that haunted look of someone fresh from a long haul flight. The one to my left is arguing quietly down the phone to someone, but it’s in a language I don’t recognise so the theatre of it is lost on me. Slowly and methodically, I peel the crust from my sandwich. I can’t count the amount of times I’ve been in this exact situation before. Burned coffee turning cold by my elbow and my sandwich making crumbs on the dirty plastic tabletop. The chatter of a hundred voices, maybe thirty of which are speaking in English. 

Airports are liminal spaces but there’s no better space for me, really. Untethered, packed to the gills with strangers, no rules except that you don’t leave your bag unattended and you bus your own plate after you’ve finished your overpriced ham sandwich.

The flight is still running late. I sink my hand into my hair and press my wrist to my forehead, breathe out slow. I can hear my watch ticking in my ear. The bitter coffee is making my stomach hurt, and belatedly I wish I’d thrown my antacids in my bag this morning but I’d been in too much of a rush to remember. Maybe if I’d known the goddamn flight was delayed I —

“You mind if I plug my phone in?” 

A voice comes from above me. I squint one eye open to take in the teenager standing in front of me, charger and phone held aloft in her hands. I wonder how I look to her, wonder if she thinks I’m hungover or something. I grunt, and then gather myself. “Sure, whatever,” I grab at my coffee, at the bag and the sign I’d thrown onto the cracked lino bench. “I’m off anyway.”

She smiles hesitantly, edging out of my way as I edge out of hers. “Thanks.”

I wish I was hungover. At least having a hangover is an excuse for feeling this shit this early in the morning, but in reality I’m just not a real adult who doesn’t know how to wake up before ten a.m. When was the last time I’d drank something that wasn’t coffee or a red bull? I know what Burgie would say. _If you have to ask then it’s been too long._ I glare at the arrivals board, flexing the stiff laminate sign between my hands until I squeeze too hard and the coffee cup I’ve got tucked in the crook of my elbow explodes. 

It goes everywhere. All down the side of the pale sweater I’d dragged out of my wardrobe that morning. All over my shoes, over the floor, dripping lukewarm and fragrant down my wrist and my fingertips, smearing into the sign. Worst is, I _yelp_. Yelp in shock like a fucking dog or a kid or something. Everyone’s looking but of course it’s an airport so nobody’s gonna do more than look. I’m left to squeeze the stupid, useless, traitorous plastic lid back onto the cup and drip my way from trashcan to bathroom to get rid of the fucking thing and then try to dab the coffee from my clothes. Somehow I know this is like some cosmic retribution for not having a reusable coffee cup and killing the environment with my tall soy latte that tasted like shit anyway. 

I try not to look in the mirror as I wring coffee from the sleeve of my one good sweater. The fluorescents wash me out, I know, and I’m not sure I need a reminder of how tired I probably look after this calamity of a morning. My stomach still hurts. Jesus Christ I wish I was hungover. 

As it is the flight comes in while I’m in the bathroom, captured by the lure of the mirror and pulling the thin purple skin under my eyes down to see just how bloodshot they are. When I emerge the arrivals hall is full of people and I groan to myself, press the laminate sign to my face and grimace into the cover of it. Now the guy I’m picking up is gonna get a cab because he couldn’t wait for five minutes of his precious life for me to finish having a minor episode in the bathroom, and my boss is gonna yell at me because this is the fifth time its happened. And I stink like burned coffee. And I’ve been away from the apartment for longer than I thought I’d be so the cat’s probably pissed on the sofa because I forgot to take the cushions up. And it means I won’t be able to write off the gas it took to drive up here as an expense so —

“Hey, are you here from Codex Books?”

I drop the laminated sheet from my face. In front of me stands an attractive, if a little rumpled, man wearing an orange-red sweater that washes him out terribly. He’s just two dark brown eyes blinking in a pale face. I clear my throat. “How d’you know that?” 

He adjusts his backpack on his shoulder, a pinch of a grimace to his face with the motion, and gestures to the sign now clutched limply by my side. Even though that sweater is making him look both pink and grey all at once the smile he levels me with transforms him. “That’s my name,” he says, a long nose over a flat mouth, a serious set to his brows. “Eugene,” he adds, like I don’t know what name I’m holding.

I rally. “Oh, goddamn,” I mutter, reaching for the little roll-along suitcase he has before I can register the curse as possibly-rude-or-at-the-very-least-unprofessional. “I thought you’d bounced.”

He laughs, unsure. “And yet you’re still here.” Then his eyes flick to the brown sleeve of my sweater and his brow furrows. I cut him off before he can ask. 

“I’m parked in short stay,” I mutter, already backing toward the doors. “Listen I ain’t paying twenty bucks because I’m a minute over an hour, so let’s —” I gesture with my thumb over my shoulder and click my tongue, “— get a move on, huh?”

Eugene looks bemused, but follows me through the crush of people in arrivals until we both spill out into the fresh air outside. It has started raining while I was inside waiting; a cool, misty drizzle that I duck my head against as I lead my new charge to the car. His suitcase wheel is fucked on one side, and I hope to God he doesn’t notice me pretty much dragging it across the ground. I mean it about the twenty bucks, I’m not about to get my card declined in front of this guy. 

“Do you always do airport pick up?” he asks, standing in the rain as he watches me throw trash from the passenger seat into the back of the car. I pitch an old water bottle into the back and gesture for him to load on in.

“Sure. I like drivin’.”

“Oh,” he murmurs, and then, “wow.”

I glance at him, sitting close and rain-damp in the small interior of my old car. “What’s that supposed to mean?” His hair is curling just very slightly from the wet. Absently, I start the car, push the gear into first as I wait for him to reply. He seems vaguely uncomfortable, big pale hands clutching in his lap, but he meets my eye no problem. 

“Nothin’,” he says, the edge of an accent to his voice. The warm air from the vents stirs his hair, and he tugs the sleeves of that hideous sweater down over his hands. “You just seem a little —” he thinks about it, and I let him. My momma always said I needed to learn patience. “New,” he settles on, and I huff and turn away, flicking on the windscreen wipers.

“Y’know,” I mutter, bitter coffee in my nose and sticky between the webs of my fingers as I pull away from the spot. “You should really say what you mean.”

We’re on the overpass before he speaks again, and by that point the warm air in the car has brought out the smell of him into the small space; cologne and laundry detergent, the usual shit. It’s nicer than my old, rarely worn sweater and the coffee I’d dumped over it so I regret having to crack the window but need a cigarette more than I enjoy his smell in my car. I light up with one hand on the steering wheel, the wipers working hard against the barrage of rain that had decided to start up not moments after we’d left the airport behind us, and I can feel how tense he is without having to look at him.

I glance his way. “I’m a good driver, I promise.” Mumbled from behind my cigarette. I watch his brows dip and the long line of his mouth flatten and I snort, amused by his disapproval. 

“I didn’t mean new,” he says, like we hadn’t moved past that point of conversation a while ago. I raise my eyebrows at him before turning back to the road. 

“Oh yeah?”

“I mean you seem too haphazard to be picking people up from an airport as part of your job description.”

I tap ash out of the window. “I was there before you, man.” If I sound disinterested I really am; I’ve picked up some big names in my time so Eugene Sledge doesn’t really intimidate me. I’ve never even read any of his books, even though my boss had pressed his latest into my hand and pretty much threatened me with a painful death if I didn’t read it in time. It’s slipping around on my backseat now, probably under an old grease stained McDonalds bag or a balled up Subway wrapper. I think about hoping he doesn’t see it but don’t really make it that far. “If this is about my car you should know I quit drinkin’ five months ago, and my therapist tells me shit like personal hygiene comes back pretty much last after you get done picklin’ your brain seven days a week.”

There’s a beat of silence. I puff happily on my cigarette. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like making people a little uncomfortable; in the past I used the alcoholism as the weapon but I’ve found that getting sober is an even more uncomfortable topic for people. I don’t know why, I don’t think I have the perspective on it to figure it out. I always wonder if in that beat of silence the person is looking me up and down and trying to fit me in with whatever they think an alcoholic looks like. 

Finally, he says, “Is that true?” And there’s just the edge of interest in there to really make me laugh. I slap the steering wheel, ash flutters into my lap. 

“You writers are all the fuckin’ same,” I say, with affection. “Everything’s a goddamn story, huh?”

To my surprise, he laughs too. When I cast him a sidelong glance he’s looking out the window into the lashing rain, those big hands of his folded neatly in his lap. In the grey, watery light, he glows. Red hair, that awful sweater. And because I’m me and because I can’t help myself, I squint at his hands. No wedding ring. I remind myself to trawl this guy’s Wikipedia page after I drop him off.

“You got me,” he says, and I know he’s wondering whether I’ve read any of his books. I expect him to ask; so many of them do, but instead he just taps his finger idly on his knee, and adds, “Can I bum a smoke?”

I grin at him. “What, big-shot author can’t afford his own smokes?” The rain is heavier now, noisier. I have to raise my voice to be heard over it. The cracked window my cigarette smoke is escaping from is letting in a fine smattering of water, and I smear my hand through the specks on the steering wheel as I turn back to the road. “Help yourself.”

“My agent made me quit.” He slips a cigarette from the pack and tucks it back into the cup holder. I hand him the lighter from the door. “Thanks. She thinks I’m a shoo-in for throat cancer.”

I snort. “Why? Anybody is.”

“She’s a hypochondriac.” He mutters, and shakes his head, leaning forward to wind the window down a little. More fresh air rushes in, replacing the cigarette smoke, replacing the stale smell of my car and the bright, clean scent of him. “She said to me, ‘how are you gonna do readings with a trach tube?’” He laughs again, and I grin at the hazy road through the lashing rain. 

“Just put your finger over the hole,” I say, and he groans. “Besides, I picked up this woman once who was old as anything, like ancient. Written seventy fuckin’ books or somethin’ over her career.” I pause to take a drag from my smoke, and drop the windscreen wipers back a notch as we seem to move beyond the pocket of bad weather. The city is looming; I have my mind half on the conversation and half on the tricky highway ramp I’ve gotta take in a minute. “She has this twink she hires to do her readings for her.”

I mainly drop the ‘twink’ in there to see how he’ll react. Ever since I got sober I’ve quit the game of casual sex, but I still like to know. Strangely, he doesn’t react either way, just mutters, “Maybe she’s got the right idea,” and drops his half smoked cigarette through the cracked window. I’ve got nothing else to add after that so we lapse into silence, which I find myself vaguely grateful for. 

Sometimes I pick up people who are happy to just sit there and talk away about themselves the whole commute from airport to whatever hotel Codex is putting them up in for the week. I don’t mind it. I sit and drive and nod my head and think about how I wish I could go home and crack open a cold beer. But I prefer it when they’re quiet; makes me feel less like a sounding board for some prick’s ego. Don’t get me wrong, I love the job, but the people-meeting aspect of it is trying now that I can’t blunt it with alcohol. I’m adjusting. I still don’t know how to go into bars without breaking out in a cold sweat, and a lot of conversation makes me come over just as clammy. 

I drop Eugene off at a hotel that’s only just elevated from a motel by the presence of a bored-looking doorman. I hand off his bags to the kid, the car still running because I’m thinking about my cat pissing on the sofa and I’m not wasting a minute hanging around here. Eugene watches me light another a cigarette, hands twitching with the ends of his sweater until I gesture and say, “Shoot,” and he does.

“Is it going to be you all week?” he asks, and I grin around my smoke. The side of the car I’m leaned up against is wet, I can feel it seeping through my pants but can’t bring myself to straighten up. I need a Red Bull.

“Is that gonna be a problem?” 

Eugene’s brows quirk. “No, I was just wondering.” The doorman — door-boy — is watching this exchange with interest. He’s got a spotty face underneath a shock of dark brown hair, a curl to his mouth that looks like it could dip into mean real quick. I wonder if Eugene is gonna tip him after he drags his suitcase with the fucked wheel into his h/motel room. 

“Okay,” I say, and straighten up. “Good, because I’m picking you up around seven tonight for the thing.” I drop my cigarette into the oily puddle beneath my feet, and smear the soaked butt through it with my boot. 

“The thing,” he echoes, and then laughs. I watch him, pinching at my lip as he nods, and then turns from me. “Okay, seven, I’ll be here.” Like he could go anywhere else. A small part of me is beginning to become dangerously fucking charmed by this guy. 

The car still smells like him when I climb back inside. I smoke another cigarette as I drive home, all the windows rolled up tight just to banish the ghost of him.

————

The cat pissed on the sofa cushion while I was out. I spend the better half of the rest of my morning trying to scrub the stink of it from the fabric, and then the worse half is spent with my fist clutched around the plastic handle of the freezer door, staring into its depths.

The vodka I keep in there stares back.

 _If you drink now you won’t be able to drive Eugene to the reading and you will lose your goddamn job you goddamned bastard idiot,_ I think. The plastic creaks under my hand. I’m getting cold standing here; the ice in the tray is gonna melt. Slyly, that little addict’s voice inside me murmurs, _Since when has being drunk stopped you from driving?_

I close the freezer door.

Home is a two room walk up above a local gay bar; Friday and Saturday nights are hell with the noise down there so I normally go driving to get away from it, but the rest of the week it’s all pretty quiet. Burgie runs it; can be found behind the bar or stress-smoking a cigarette out by the trashcans seven nights a week, and he’s so unambiguously heterosexual I always wonder if he knows what kinda place he’s running. Maybe the biweekly drag show called _CUNT_ the bar hosts is enough to tell him, but I’m actually not too sure. However he’s seen me in all the kinds of states a person can be in, so I love him a little too deeply to rag on him too much about being straight. 

For some reason I can’t be alone with the vodka in my freezer today, and the cat’s fucked off to go piss outside this time, hopefully, so I’m turned loose downstairs. The hallway is dim and smells damp and sharp, that hoppy smell of beer mixed with mildew. I creak my way down the narrow flight of stairs, slick from the rain, and have a cigarette already tucked firm between my lips when I round the front of the bar to shoulder my way in. Burgie barely glances up as I take a seat at the bar, sliding into my regular stool with a practised kind of ease. We have a complicated relationship, this stool and I. It’s thrown me off more times than I can count.

“Beer me,” I mumble, easing my lighter from my back pocket before hooking an ashtray closer to me. Burgie shoots me a long-suffering look from where he’s kneeled in front of the fridges, notepad and pencil in hand. 

“Snafu,” he says, dourly. “I hate when you do that.”

“I’m countin’ on you pouring me a drink on reflex one day before you realise who’s talkin’ to ya.” I smear my hand across my face, think of the contents of my freezer, think of Eugene’s book sliding around on the backseat of my car. The tit-shaped clock over the bar tells me it’s just past noon, and normally I’d be sinking easily into the stride of drunkenness for the day but instead here I am with the smell of liquor in my nose and Burgie sliding me a Pepsi across the sticky bar. I offer him a dollar that he waves off. “I’ve got a date tonight,” I tell him, just to watch his eyebrow quirk. The Pepsi is kinda lukewarm which makes it taste flat, but I can’t blame Burgie — I’m the one that interrupted him restocking the fridges anyway. 

“Is that what they call a fifteen minute ride to a bookstore in your filthy car these days?” he asks, and I flip him off. He only laughs and crouches back down to begin shuffling through the fridge again, and I turn on my stool and settle my elbows back on the bar, scanning the room as I tear my way through my first cigarette. 

My therapist likes to tell me I’m putting myself in a harmful situation by coming here. Her words, not mine. But what was I supposed to do, move? On my salary? Besides, there’s not much about the Shore Leave I’d call harmful, if I turn my back on the liquor anyway. It’s a pokey, wood-panelled little building, more suited for a bunch of old men sitting around playing darts instead of a few dozen gay people and a couple drag queens. Still, it’s popular; known for heavy pours at cheap prices and a lively, if lowkey, atmosphere even on weeknights. That’s how I ended up here anyway. Didn’t move in to the place upstairs for a good couple years but frequented the bar most nights out of the week with buddies from college, with boyfriends, dates, even alone. Then the occasional lone drinking sessions turned into something so frequent I knew Burgie better than my friends, and then I lost about eight years to what followed.

I drink my Pepsi. On the wall the TV is playing the news; I let my eyes glaze over until it’s nothing but shapes shuffling around silently, Madonna playing over the speakers an odd background to it. Sometimes it’s almost enough just to be in the quiet presence of it. Alcohol, that is. It’s why I keep the vodka anyway. Completely full, the seal unbroken. Ice cold, expensive, a last resort. I plan to make this particular stint of sobriety stick.

“So who’s it this week?” Burgie asks, the rubbery mat behind the bar squeaking under his shoes as he rises. The notepad gets tossed into a puddle of beer, and I press my cheek to my shoulder to read it. Down Heineken this week, down PBR. I used to drink beer and a shot to start out my night, and then anything I could get my hands on after that. “You read their book?”

I twist to tap my smoke into the ashtray, nudging the pillar of ash against it until it falls. “Eugene Sledge by way of Alabama,” I say, and draw the vowels out real long. “And no, I haven’t. Don’t like crime.”

Burgie makes an interested noise, turned away to serve one of the old pickled regulars a beer. “I like crime.”

“I’ll give it to you tonight then,” I say, watching the head froth up and over his knuckles. The regular pays, and leaves, takes the drink back to his perch in the corner in view of the TV. I watch him go. I’d always wondered why he lets them drink themselves to death but drew the line with me, but I guess that’s the perks of friendship with your bartender. He stuck his fingers down my throat once to make me throw up a bellyful of vodka and god-knows-what-else, but that’s a whole other story. I stub my cigarette out and light up another. 

“You know, your sister called,” he murmurs, and settles his elbows to the bar top, fixes me with those big, earnest blue eyes. “You should really call her back.” 

I think in another life in which Burgie wasn’t straight as a fucking flagpole we would’ve slept together. Maybe just once, maybe when I was still drinking or maybe even during one of my sober spells. But that would’ve made things messy so maybe it’s a little miracle he’s not even curious; I have enough self awareness to know I need a friend more than a quick lay. I shrug. “I’ll catch her next time she calls.” It’s a lie and we both know it, I can tell by the dip of Burgie’s eyes; a barely restrained eye roll. “I’ll let Sheba pick it up.”

“Ha ha,” he says, no humour behind it. He straightens up, and I watch him round the bar to collect a few glasses, kicking my feet against the spindle on the stool. “You know,” he calls, the topic of my sister abandoned. “Sheba’s been around here begging food off the customers. You need to feed her more.”

“You’ve seen the size of her!” I cry, offended anyone could even glance at my cat and think she’s underfed. “Burg, she’s eatin’ me out of house and home.”

He just shakes his head at me, but there’s the quirk of a smile to his mouth so I know he thinks it’s funny. She can smell when the kitchen downstairs is going, and always slinks out to see what she can charm off the people at the bar; short of shutting her in the apartment there’s nothing I can do about it. I’d bought her one of those collars that said _DO NOT FEED_ a couple months ago, a precious ten dollars spent on something she managed to lose in an tight thirty minutes. The ceiling fan beating above my head stirs my cigarette smoke back around to me; I pluck at the front of the t-shirt I’d swapped the coffee-stained sweater out for, and then hold the collar to my nose. Cigarette smoke, B.O. I wore it to bed, and make a mental note to change out of it before I go pick Eugene up tonight. Dirty car, fine, whatever, but dirty clothes? I need to at least seem semi-functional to the guy.

“Burg, you’ll never guess what the writer guy said to me today,” I say, mumbled through my shirt. The Pepsi is fully at room temp now, and abandoned to the bar top. He only gives it to me because he knows I like to have something in my hand. I wait for him to look up from the glasses he’s washing, and when he does I drop the shirt from my nose, “He said I was haphazard.” I snort, but Burgie doesn’t laugh, just drops his attention back to the sink and grins down into it.

“That’s a pretty good description,” he says, “so he must be a pretty good writer, huh?”

“Shut up.” I crush my second cigarette out and then stand, “You’re not meant to agree.”

He grins at me. “How can I not?” 

“You’re fake,” I announce, and point to him as I slip off the stool. Now I’ve become aware of it, I’m desperate for the shower I skipped this morning, can’t think of nothing but stripping off this dirty t-shirt and getting some soap in my hair. Maybe if Sheba’s back I’ll take a bath; she loves to sit on the edge and dip her tail in the water. “Burg, I’ll be back with the book later but don’t take it as a sign I’ve forgiven you.”

“Sure, sure.”

“And don’t turn the dishwasher on, I’m takin’ a shower!” I yell back over my shoulder, the door shutting firmly behind me before I can hear his reply. I take the stairs up two at a time to find an apartment with no cat inside. Just me, the vodka, the low pulse of music from downstairs. 

I shower, hands pressed to the tiles as I grit my teeth against the heat of the water, and stay in there for a long time washing those nagging urges towards drink from myself.

————

Eugene is wearing a blazer over the same sweater he’d had on when I’d picked him up, and for a moment I find myself shocked again by how badly it clashes with his hair before I get used to it. Does he know? Did his mother never tell him? And then he climbs into the passenger seat and turns to me with something serious in his expression. I wait.

“Is that my book under all the trash on your backseat?” he asks, and I will my face not to crack. 

“No, nope,” I smack his hand away as he goes to reach for it. “You’re mistaken, that’s a different client’s book.”

His cheek is pressed to the headrest as he attempts to wrestle past my efforts to keep him out of the back seat, and he’s grinning, not the slightest bit annoyed as he tilts his head and says, “A different book with my face on the back?”

“You know you’ve got a very average face,” I lie, like the guy doesn’t look like a vaguely handsome muppet. “Could be anyone, actually — oh, c’mon.”

He plucks it from the backseat, victorious. Knowing that I’ve lost, I start the car with a grumble, lighting the front of the h/motel up in the wash of my headlights. Eugene doesn’t say anything more; seemingly happy to have just confirmed his suspicions, and I turn the radio up a little just to cover the noise of the wet road under the wheels as we drive. He smells the same as he did earlier, if a little softer, a little warmer, like maybe he’d taken a nap in his clothes earlier in the afternoon. 

“You nervous for the reading?” I ask, the usual smalltalk. In the trunk I have a box full of his latest, along with several bottles of wine rolling around in there that are making me anxious. I’ll have to pass them off to someone else to make sure the guests get all warmed up and wined up tonight, and lapse into wondering how I can do that without making myself look like a crazy person as Eugene answers. 

I tune back in just in time to hear him say, “ — twink to do my reading,” and grin, shooting him an amused sidelong glance. The cigarette smoking away between my fingers shudders ash onto my knees as I turn the steering wheel. I pay it no mind.

“You like that idea?”

I can just barely see the curve of his smile in the darkness, the sporadic light from passing street lamps an amber glow lighting up the inside of the car. Light, dark. His eyes are on the book in his lap, and I watch him run a finger down the front of it before he’s plunged back into darkness. 

“I like the idea of not having to go to events like these.” He’s silent for a beat. The radio plays softly into the lull in conversation, punctuated only by the tick of the blinker as I make a turn. There’s not many cars on the road, just the odd streak of a red brake light, the occasional sweep of headlights from an oncoming car lighting us both up in a static little freeze frame. “What ever happened to like, the reclusive writer?” he asks, and I shrug. “You know? When did events become a must to sell books?”

“I guess when everybody sat up one day and thought they could be a writer.” I drift through an amber light; watch it flick to red as I pass underneath it. 

He snorts. “You believe that?”

“I believe there’s a lotta people out there who think experience equals talent.” I clear my throat, and add, “I could fill a book with all the shit that’s happened to me. Doesn’t mean I should.” I don’t know why I’m telling him this. The warmth and the silence of the car are lulling me into uncharted territories, a sleepy kind of trust. I feel disconnected, and it’s not in a bad way. Tongue loose and head kinda full of nothing, really. It’s nice. Eugene has a calm presence. 

“Maybe you should,” he murmurs, and I hear him tap his fingernail to the dust jacket of his book. “Did you read this?”

I grin, not looking away from the road as the GPS tells me we’re a few hundred yards from our destination. The traffic is thicker here in the centre of town; I stop at a red light, and turn to him. “Eugene,” I say, his face lit in the red glow of the brake lights on the car in front. He looks at me with those big brown doe eyes, hair sticking up like maybe he really did take a nap, and I feel a foreign little pulse of affection for him. Lit up all red like that. “I plead the fifth,” I say, and laugh as he rolls his eyes and turns from me. “Don’t tell my boss.”

“I should,” he threatens, but somehow I know he won’t. He isn’t the type. 

It’s only after I’ve parked, when he’s helping me unload the trunk of my car, does he speak again. Paused halfway across the parking lot with the sound of traffic our backdrop, a faux-thoughtful expression on his face like the question’s only just popped into his head. I know better. I could practically see him stewing over this as I’d stacked wine bottles into his arms. 

“If you didn’t read it, how d’you know I’m not one of those people?” he asks, and I sigh, shift the box in my grasp a little. 

“Is it important what I think of you?” It’s a fair question, and one that doesn’t really demand the crumpled expression of thought that drifts across his face. The box is really goddamn heavy, I shift it again to try and get a better grip on it. All his precious little hardbacks slide around in there. “I mean, man, I ain’t no critic.”A few people pass us then, heading for the lit-up little bookstore Eugene’s set to do his reading in tonight. I wonder what they’d think if they knew he was out here staring me down over an armful of wine with a look on his face like I’m stupid for even asking the question.

“That’s exactly whose opinion matters.”

I roll my eyes. “Okay, fine, I don’t know if you’re one of those people or not. I don’t care. Can we go inside? This box is killin’ me.”

He stares at me for a moment longer, and then drops it. Brushes past me stood there like an idiot with all his goddamn books, expression set in the light that bleeds from the windows of the store. I think I’ve upset him, which piques a little flame of annoyance in me. Writers get on my nerves like you wouldn’t believe sometimes, sensitive fucking things that they are. Asking questions they don’t wanna hear the answers to. Because really, what does my opinion matter? The guy has five star reviews slapped below the blurb of his sophomore release, a sticker on the front that means it was featured in some magazine, and probably far more money in the bank than I do. And all he cares about is some made up thing I spouted when I was feeling all dark-road-drunk and loose in his company. Like it’s my fault he’s decided what I said is something to be worried about.

Eugene leaves the wine on the table the store has left out for the event; leaves me to deal with trying to offload it onto somebody else. Impossible, of course. Instead I inch around it and set up the book display like the wine isn’t even there, spending way too long creating this intricate little stack of Eugene’s books just to avoid the inevitable.

I remember fucking up my hand when I was about twenty-three, opened myself up from the meaty bit just at the base of my thumb right up to my pinky. The blood was black: black black red smeared and dripping into my dirty kitchen sink. Burgie had long stopped serving me then, and I can’t remember why I had wine in my house but I did and it was all I had so of course I had to get it gone. I’ve done a lot of stupid shit in my life — like a _lot_ — but being piss-ass drunk and jamming a knife into the cork of a bottle of wine is really fucking high up there. And I know it sounds weird: an alcoholic without a corkscrew, but to be fair to myself I wasn’t ever much of a wine drinker. I had to get eight stitches in the end but that was only after I finished the bottle, a towel bunched in my fist to stem the blood.

“Hey,” I say, catching the arm of some kid who looks bored enough that I know he must work here. He looks at me with a long-suffering expression on his face. “I’m sorry, can you —” His brow wrinkles, some sixth sense that I’m about to ask him to do something he’s not explicitly being paid for, and it’s that which makes me realise what a crazy idiot I’m being. I clear my throat, shove images of my bleeding palm from my mind. “You got a corkscrew?” 

It had looked like a mouth, the cut. Opening and closing with the movements of my hand. 

* * *

I step outside while Eugene is reading, though I can still hear his voice through the walls. Not the words, just the shape of it. Steady, deliberate, a certain rhythm to his reading that I decide I like. I perch my ass on the trunk of my car and light a cigarette, chilly in the misty evening, wearing only a thin sweater. It’s been raining on and off since the morning, and the lights from the bookstore, from the traffic lights across the street, shine wetly back at me from the dark, damp asphalt. Through the windows of the store all I can see is the back of heads, all turned in the same direction. When I exhale, the smoke hangs still in the air, no breeze to shift it.

I wonder when I’ll stop feeling so goddamn alone. 

This is my major stumbling block, I think. Or maybe that’s just my therapist speaking through me. Her name is Jaclyn, and I call her anything but that. Jac, Jackie-O, Jay. Red hair, older than me but not by enough that I don’t feel a twinge of shame from being so. Well, you know. She does this thing where she clicks the button on her pen really really quickly when she thinks I’m deflecting; I think it’s just because it irritates her but I wouldn’t be surprised if she really was trying to Pavlov’s-dog me. I swear, the other day in work the girl in the cube opposite me was doing it and I came over all sweaty and ready to blurt, _okay, okay, JJ, ask me the question again —_

She thinks the reason why I can’t stay sober is because of how it affects my social life. Her words, not mine. If you’d ask me, I don’t have a social life to speak of, but maybe that’s her point. Jac tells me I think I’m ‘nonfunctional without alcohol’, and I am. I don’t just think it. Can’t even do my job right anymore; I don’t have that looseness it takes to schmooze with all those fucking buyers like I do when I’m maybe a couple beers deep and cruising steady through my day. Can’t talk to my friends anymore, can’t hang out with anyone but Burgie, and Jac disapproves of that anyway. Like he isn’t practically the only person in the world but her who cares whether I’m drunk or not. _And_ I don’t have to pay him. Can’t even sit in on a client’s reading because there’s an open bottle of wine on the table next to me and I’m handing it off to people like I wouldn’t die for even a mouthful. I know I put myself in these situations but fuck, everything’s out to test me. I miss the instant connection between drunk people. I miss how everything gets flipped: all the big stuff matters so little, all the small stuff matters so much. I’d lash out over some perceived slight, but didn’t feel anything when my dad died.

A car rushes by, tires on a wet road. I hover the burning end of my cigarette over the back of my hand, close enough to feel the heat of it. 

The disconnect is painful. I live in parking lots now; kicking around outside with a cigarette while everyone indoors has that warm fucking moment of human connection. Burgie says I’m on the pity parade. Jac says I’m adjusting. I don’t know who to listen to so I just listen to neither of them. I want to turn my face towards Eugene up there on the stage just like every other person inside, but I can’t. 

The door to the bookstore opens, and Eugene’s voice rushes out into the street before the door closes and he’s muffled again. I pitch my cigarette butt away from myself and tuck my hand under my thigh, palm flat against the cool, wet metal of the trunk. The person who’s joined me outside isn’t important, nobody I recognise, just some guy after a cigarette and a bit of fresh air just like me. We watch each other across the parking lot. I almost want to yell out, _are you a fuck-up too?_ Talk about ruining a reading. I could write the book on it. 

***

Eugene is pink-cheeked and a little silly by the time I shoehorn him back into the car. He’d gotten into the wine: the middle of his mouth is stained dark from it, and for one truly insane moment I think about kissing him. I’m stood on the passenger side of the car, my hand on the top of the door and the other braced to the roof, and it’d be so easy to bend down and taste him that for a split second I almost convince myself to do it. And then, because foresight is afforded to only the sober amongst us, I flip quickly through what would happen if I did. His cry of shock, of disgust, his complaint to my boss, my firing, my rebranding as an uncontrollable, alcoholic, gay sexual harasser. 

I shut the car door on his stupid tipsy pink face. 

“Let’s go to a —” he begins, after I start the car and pull out of the parking lot. So buoyed by his successful reading — _didn’t even stumble over a word, can you believe it?_ — he doesn’t even realise until the words are almost out of his mouth. I hear him swallow. The car is quiet; the radio is a low static as we pass under a bridge. “Sorry.”

“Maybe another time,” I drawl, tired of this night, tired of having to try. Again, that pulse of alienation. We lapse into silence, my eyes on the road and Eugene’s on his hands, folded in his lap like pale fish in the dark car. 

_Am I making a bad first impression?_ I want to ask, but I suppose it’s not the first anymore. Third? Second? It’s been a very very long day. _I made a bad first impression_ , I shift it to, because there’s something unknown, or at the very least not ready to be known, urging it up through my chest. I don’t mean to come off like I’m coming off to him. Okay, sometimes I do — a lot of the time I do. _I’m adjusting_. Jac’s voice. I think it’s in my nature to be an asshole.

He speaks before I can.

“You know, you never told me your name.”

I blink. “What?” 

I’m surprised enough that I turn my head to look at him, and catch his eyes at the same time. Black in the darkness. There’s something sleepy to them, half-drunk, playful. The corner of his mouth twitches. “I’ve just been calling you Codex Books Rep in my head.”

A beat of silence. I want to laugh at that, but it won’t come up. “Oh,” I murmur, squeezing my hands on the steering wheel. “It’s Merriell.” Why does this feel intimate? I don’t give him the nickname that Burgie calls me by, even though that and my surname are all I ever hear these days. 

“Merriell,” Eugene says, testing it out. It reminds me of his reading voice, that low, unhurried carefulness to it. I feel myself flush hot and cold at hearing him call me that, and have to force a laugh.

“Only my momma ever called me that.” And that feels stupidly intimate too. I shut up. Eugene doesn’t seem to sense the awkwardness I know must be rolling off me in waves; he leans to the side in his seat a little, and hums.

“I don’t think I’ve heard the name before.”

I think that’s why I stopped giving it to people. Easier to get called a SNAFU by Burgie and get called Shelton by every other person in my life than to get questioned on it. “It’s pretty much made up,” I say, and hope he leaves it at that. 

Of course, he doesn’t. I’ve not known the guy twenty-four hours yet but I’ve come to expect that streak of stubbornness in him well enough. 

“It’s a nice name,” he murmurs, sounding sleepy and half-drunk. I grunt. The lights of the h/motel are coming up in the distance, right at the rise of the hill, and already I’m dreaming about being alone. It’s been a full-on day. I want my bed and my cat and the hum of the refrigerator. Silence. I wanna crank the space heater to eleven and melt into my mattress, I want a cigarette and a slice of thickly buttered toast that’ll drop crumbs on my comforter. 

I drop him off at the door, and don’t stick around to watch him walk inside. After a quick detour into the bar to shove the leftover wine Burgie’s way, I flee upstairs, away from the familiar and borderline comfortable clutch of the crowd downstairs. I do miss it, I miss it like it was something other than me drinking myself to death. Like it was something I needed to live. I watch the news and see dancers and footballers bemoaning their fucked up legs that mean they’ll never get to do what they love again, and that awful selfish part of me that feels so big relates to them. Isn’t that terrible?

Sheba is asleep on the armchair when I let myself in, and she lifts her head to yawn at me in greeting as I wander close to turn a lamp on, to scratch her chin. “Hello,” I whisper, “Hi, baby.” She presses her head into my touch and I press my thumb to her forehead, smiling at how loudly she’s purring. “You wanna come to bed?” I ask. “You want a snack?”

I feed her butter from my thumb, hissing as she grabs at my wrist with her claws in her haste to debride the butter from my skin. Then I eat some; the thick bread, the thick butter I’d dreamed of. Eugene’s book is abandoned to my countertop, but at least it’s not sliding around in all the trash in my car anymore, right? I flip it over to read the blurb as I eat, stood in the middle of my kitchen still in my jacket and shoes, unable to settle just yet despite my tiredness. It’s always like this after a long day. I’ve never been a good sleeper. Sheba butts her head to my shin, and I just mumble at her, peering at the corny little author’s photograph that’s slapped on the back of Eugene’s book. He looks cute in it, his hair a little longer and less wild than it is now. I wonder again what might have happened if I’d kissed him tonight, if I’d tasted the red wine on his mouth, and can’t decide what would be the worst case scenario. Him pushing me away, or him pulling me closer? 

I slide the book back onto the counter. It doesn’t matter what the worst-case would have been because it didn’t happen. _And won’t happen_ , I remind myself, as I let Sheba lead me through to my bedroom, shedding my coat and shoes along the way. 

That night I dream of the freezer, about tugging and tugging on the handle of it with mounting desperation. Foot braced to the front of the fridge, cartoonish. The door remains firmly and stubbornly closed, until I pull harder and then harder again, the creak of giving ice and then —

I half wake, mouth dry. Sheba is a warm suffocating mass on my chest, her long hair in my nose as I pick my head up to blink at the dark room. Through my bedroom window I can see the streetlamp outside blink on; someone passing underneath it. It throws orange stripes across my comforter, across the messy contents of my room.

In the room next door, the freezer hums, low and all-consuming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!!! lemme know what you thought :~) it feels good to be writing sledgefu again! it feels like it's been longer than it has lmao, university is swallowing up every bit of my creative energies 
> 
> i can't commit like i wish i could to a solid upload schedule but once my deadlines coming up are over i'll be free to write so :~) won't be forever!! hopefully i can have day 2 up in a week or so (emphasis on the so)


	2. tuesday

I go driving in the morning, wake up early for it because I’m sober now and I can. Jac says it’s about finding the little joys, and I don’t think I try as hard as she’d like me to, but we’ve all gotta start somewhere. She wants me to write them down but I won’t. I just make a mental little note that I know I’ll forget by the end of the day, but it feels like some sort of forward progress so I keep doing it. _Waking up without a hangover_ , is my little joy for today. _Not waking up drunk._ I’m even putting on weight. That’s another little joy, but I’ll save it for tomorrow in case one doesn’t come around. I try and ration myself to one per day; I don’t want to get over-invested in them after all.

The first time I relapsed it’d been because of a break-up, which is so stupid and juvenile but whatever I guess I’m both those things. Back then I had a little more faith in myself so I used to write down all my joys, but lemme tell you, being broken-hearted and trawling through a notebook in search of a little joy to make you feel better only to be confronted with joys that revolve around your now-ex? Pretty fucking brutal. So I drank a six pack of beer and a little Jameson, and went and sat out on the steps in the January cold in just a t-shirt until Burgie caught wind of it and hustled me back inside. 

Like I said, stupid. 

I don’t really have a destination in mind when I go driving. A glance at the clock shows I have an hour before I need to be at work, or an hour and a half before I _really_ need to be at work, so I feed Sheba, pull on a coat, grab my keys and go. It’s a grey morning, drizzly, and I tuck my chin into the collar of my jacket as I take the steps down to the street to escape the slight chill to the air. Winter comes quicker to the Pacific Northwest, half the trees still have brown and orange leaves clinging to them but it’s cold outside like it’s not early fall. I’ve never been one for the cold — growing up down south made sure of that, so I become a homebody around wintertime anyway. Less bars, less partying. But drinking alone is harder to kick than drinking with others, somehow. It’s the secrecy of it, I guess. Nobody would know but myself if I’d kept one of those bottles of wine and downed it last night before bed, after all. I didn’t. But I could have, and that’s the scary part, that’s the part which is hard to control. 

The car’s colder then outside, somehow. My breath puffs white from my mouth as I settle into the seat, the leather creaking, pulling my phone from my back pocket to text Jac. 

_went 2 event didn’t drink gave burg the wine — do I graduate?_

I wait until I see the dots of her reply pop up before throwing the phone into the ashtray; swapping it for the pack of smokes I keep there. My dad used to keep a fifth of Jim Beam wedged in there, kinda too big for the space so your knuckles hit it when you shifted gear. Sometimes I wonder if what I do is learned behaviour or something genetic, but I guess I’ll never know. My sister isn’t a fuck up, so maybe there’s hope in our bloodline yet.

I flick channels on the radio for a while, brain and feet moving on autopilot as I drive through the quiet, rain-washed streets. The news, the boring news, pop music station, even more boring news. Gardening programme, radio play. Oldies. I swerve to avoid a dead fox in the road, its middle a smear of red nothingness, and watch the carcass in the rearview until it’s out of sight. Grey mornings are for melancholy, and mentally I scratch out my original little joy and replace it with the one I was gonna save for tomorrow. _Gaining weight_. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Fuck, do I have a little joy yet for the day? Jac drives me fucking crazy with these things, she tells me I’ve gotta stop changing my mind on what constitutes a _joy_ but that’s easier said than done. I thought I was happy to wake up without a hangover but now that I’m driving around with the corpse of the fox in the back of my mind I don’t. If I’d woken up drunk I wouldn’t have driven, and then I’d have never seen it. I switch the channel again, settle on the classical station for a second before it starts to make me feel corny, and then turn the radio off all together. 

Silence. Just the sound of tires on wet road, the world quiet and hazy this time of the morning. Just me and everyone else getting to work a little earlier than they have to. Of course, I’ve got no destination. Maybe I should take up walking instead, maybe that’d tackle the weight thing and also the whole killing the environment thing with my ancient car. 

I think about the Jim Beam in the ashtray. I think about Eugene’s pale hands in the darkness of the car. I think about the taste of a cold beer and then my boss red-faced and “disappointed, not _angry_ , Shelton,” after he’d bollocked me for an hour about my work performance. That was post- missed airport pick up number three, and pre-sabbatical. The world slips by around me, the day lightening in increments, ready to begin. 

I turn the radio back on. Oldies station, fine. Better than my own thoughts. 

Jac had texted me back when I was driving. I read it sat in the parking lot behind the offices, having a cigarette in the warmth of my car to avoid the rain. _got a joy for me?_ she’s sent, and I scoff quietly to myself, cigarette dangling from my lips as I tap a reply to her.

_had one. lost one. what, I gotta have one by 9am?_

She replies instantly. _you’re a one mood for the day kinda guy_.

 _don’t you have lives to be saving?_ I reply, before tucking my phone away and stepping out of the car with a groan. I stretch. The couple cigarettes I’ve had on top of my empty stomach have made me feel ill, so I head inside without finishing the one I’d been smoking, making a beeline through the building for the kitchen. Codex is one of those trendy millennial workplaces with a fridge full of kombucha and Red Bulls, big tubes of shit in the kitchen. Granola, cereal, whatever. Are they the same thing? I can’t put name to half the stuff in there, okay, I grew up poor. But now I’m a borderline corporate shill drinking kombucha like I even know what it is. 

(I’m joking about the shill thing, I really do believe in independent publishing. Obviously. Why else would I work for pennies?)

I eat a granola bar at my desk, swipe crumbs from the white surface of it, and then eat another. The office is steadily coming to life around me; people wandering in looking bleary and tired, starting up computers, clustered around the Food Tubes in the kitchen. That used to be me not six months ago, only I’d probably be in at least an hour later and ready to throw up in the bathrooms about forty seconds into the workday. But so is the life of the rich and famous. I sweep more granola crumbs onto the floor, and pull off my boots so I can settle cross-legged into my chair as I start up my computer. Someone passes by behind me and says good morning, to which I mumble something back. 

It’s not that I’m necessarily embarrassed that everyone saw me, and has been seeing me, take a complete fucking nose dive into drink. But it’s not that I’m not embarrassed either. After my ‘sabbatical’ that I spent drying out at my sister’s place, everyone’s been treating me a little different. Nothing major, nothing to even pinpoint, but it’s there. People ask me how I am these days. They peer into my face when I talk to them as if they’d be able to tell if I’ve been drinking. And they all know where I went and why I went; everyone gossips like teenagers in this office because, well, most of them are pretty much teenagers. I think before I went everyone just thought I was a fucking prick, which to be fair I was, and now I’m sure they think the same but with the added veneer of _fragile_. But maybe I’m just making shit up. Maybe I’m projecting. 

“Shelton,” someone says, a voice in my ear, and then I’m yanked a foot back from my desk as the voice rolls my chair back sharply. “What’s up?”

I groan, and tip my head back to take in Bill’s grinning face above me, his hands like vices around the sides of my desk chair. My best work friend, if a little bastard who steals all your smokes can be called a friend. “Bill, you ever get tired of tryna give me office whiplash?” 

“You ever get tired of coming in looking like shit?” he quips, and releases me so I can drag myself back to my desk. He falls into the seat next to me, and hits a couple keys on the keyboard to wake his computer up. “Late night?” he adds, and grins again at my eye roll. 

“Keep crackin’ jokes, Leyden,” I say, leaning back in my chair to watch him log in. His password is ‘bigdick1234’. “I’ll make you the target of my next alcohol-fuelled breakdown.”

“Looking forward to it,” he says, and then, “Take me outta my misery,” as he pulls up his email. “Thompson has me working through the fuckin’ reject pile.”

I whistle and raise my eyebrows, spinning a little in my seat to watch everyone still lined up at the Tubes. My desk is right across from the kitchen, a glass-walled little box with some cheap vinyl sofas and a couple microwaves, and it entertains me all day long. “What’d you do to deserve that?” 

He’s long-suffering when he replies, hunched forward over his keyboard as he taps something out. “What do I ever do to deserve anything?” 

Bill Leyden is the sort of guy you try your best to avoid in the office, so it stands to reason why we’re friends. I guess we’re both that kinda guy. He’s tiny; five nothing, with a mouth so big it almost makes up for how goddamn shrimpy he is. We’d met my very first day at Codex, because he’s a hard man to miss and even if you did, he has this habit of going up to the fresh meat to poke at them. He’d poked at me, I’d poked back, and the rest is history. I remember the first time I was drying out he came over and brought me Xanax, then watched a fucking Christmas movie in July with my stoned ass until I fell asleep. He’s a good guy, deep down. Really, really deep down. It was because of him that I have Sheba; she’d been a tiny stray that he’d found under the hood of his car, and I’d been the first person he offered her to like he somehow knew I needed company. That was back when I was drinking and not making any moves to stop, tallboy in a brown paper bag on my lunch break to stop my hands shaking kinda drinking. He’d brought her into work in his duffel, showed her off to me after hustling me into the bathroom like we were doing a drug deal. _I hate cats_ , he’d said, the gentle way he was handling her saying something else. _You look like a cat guy, though._

Don’t get me wrong though, 99% of the time the guy is the biggest bastard to walk my specific part of the world. Don’t let me being corny about our friendship sway you on that. He’s the sorta guy who’ll send a chain-email full of porn to everyone in the office just to get a kick out of being written up by HR. 

“Do I really look like shit?” I ask, swivelling my seat back to look at him. 

Bill snorts, not looking away from his computer as he mutters, “Yeah, dude.”

And so the day wears on. 

I send a few emails in the morning out to some local buyers, attempting to hawk some books I think would do pretty well. It’s not the same as selling face to face but my boss has dialled back on my responsibilities since my sabbatical so it’ll have to do. I kinda hate him for it, just as much as I’m pretty grateful for it. There’s a book fair coming up at the end of the month that he wants to me to get on the road for, another rep in tow, and I’m hoping I can make it. Jac says staying sober is about setting yourself these short term goals that hinge on your sobriety, and I’m not sure if there’s much truth to the concept but it seems to be working out so far. Last month’s goal was returning to work, and here I am sat at my desk with my wilting pot plant and the picture of me and Burgie from Christmas four years ago, Bill to my right with his head on his desk pretending to be dead. 

“They can’t be that bad,” I mutter, already thinking about my noon cigarette as I tap out a quick tweet. _Veronica Miller’s first novel is —_

“They’re worse than you can even believe.”

I snort. “Try selling a book about vampires in this post-Twilight economy, man.”

“Yeah,” he says, and then, “Smoke?” 

My mind is on Eugene as we stand outside in the drizzle and smoke together, both mine and Bill’s internal nic-clocks on the same schedule from years of doing this together. Thinking about the crazy little moment stood there holding the car door open, Eugene’s dark brown eyes peering up at me above the red wine stain of his mouth. Like lipstick. I almost tell Bill, that’s how preoccupied I am with the memory, but hold off. It’d be around the office in seconds if I told him. It’s just the right amount of vulnerable but dysfunctional to really crack him up; not serious enough to be kept on the low, like that blistering hot afternoon of the Xanax and _It’s A Wonderful Life_. That wouldn’t make a good email blast. Me coming over all hot for a writer? Hilarious. 

“What time do you have to leave?” he asks, turned away from me to watch a girl from the office he has the hots for walk away. “Goddamn, d’you think Sophie would even look at me?”

“Not after the thing you sent ‘round,” I mutter, watching her too. Bill kisses his teeth in annoyance, like it wasn’t him who clicked send. “Gotta leave by one.” I add, to the question he’s forgotten he’s even asked, judging by the sidelong look he throws me.

“One,” he echoes, ashing onto the ground between his sneakers. “Right, for the Sledge thing. How you feelin’ now Thompson’s got on Uber duty?” He grins, teasing, but there’s an edge to it that makes me nudge him, elbow his side affectionately.

“Better than answerin’ emails and sittin’ at my desk with my thumb up my ass.” 

“Yeah,” he says, smoke streaming from his nostrils as he glances up at the slate grey sky above us. He looks thoughtful. I think my drinking problems have given him a lot to think about in his own life. “Yeah, I bet.”

————

“Did you always wanna do this?”

I have Eugene in the car again, the two of us driving out to the next city over for a book signing. I’d left Bill facedown on the desk again, but he’d texted me a hieroglyphic string of emojis that I’d received while waiting for Eugene to come out that I think translated to ‘good luck!’, or maybe something a little more crude. At the very least it shows the reject pile hasn’t conquered him yet. 

I kiss my teeth, eyes on the side mirror as I merge lanes. “Not always. When I was in college all I wanted to do was drop out, so I did. Then I worked for a couple years in a garage.” I can hear his surprise in his silence, and glance at him with a grin. “I’m from Louisiana. Plenty opportunities for manual labour in my town, but not much for anything else.”

“It’s the same in Alabama,” he says, and I feel a warm kind of affection for him spring up in me at that. I miss the South; it’s nice talking to someone who understands it. He’s wearing a white button up shirt today, tucked into grey slacks. A brown bomber lies over his knees. I almost wanted to congratulate him after the travesty of that orange sweater from yesterday. “You went back to college?” he adds, and I nod.

“Finished up my degree part time, then moved up here for work.” 

“You been back since?”

I snort, and grab blindly for the pack of cigarettes in the ashtray. “Yeah, couple months ago.” I don’t tell him about why I had to go down there: I may have told him about the alcoholism but that’s something that’s hard to avoid bringing up eventually. Best to head it off early. Getting into the details of coming back to Louisiana to dry up in my sister’s guest room? He’s gotta at least buy me a drink first to hear that. Ha. 

My hand doesn’t connect with the smooth cardboard of my smokes but instead bumps up against something warm that I don’t register as skin until I curl my fingers around it. “I’m sorry,” Eugene mumbles, and I look down in time to see him pulling his hand away. “I was just gonna —”

Idiotically, I flush, and in the same beat I’m relieved that he won’t see it. Jesus, I practically held his hand. “No, it’s cool,” I try and pitch my voice indifferent. The car is full of that fresh clean scent of him again, and that coupled with the familiar affection I’d felt just now and the way I’d ran my fingers over his palm, is all starting to affect me a little. “Tryin’ to keep me from crashin’ and takin’ you out with me, I get it.”

He laughs, and it’s a little forced. When I glance to the side I see his face is as pink as mine feels, which has something vaguely wolfish crawling up my throat. I swallow. The radio plays into silence between us. 

“Pass me a smoke, then,” I murmur, one hand on the steering wheel and the other resting on my thigh. I can get it myself, and he knows that. I see his gaze flick from my hand to my face to the pack of smokes, wedged into the ashtray innocently next to my sunglasses case, a couple balled up receipts. The GPS pipes up, reminding me of the exit I have to take in a mile, and I watch as Eugene reaches for the cigarettes, flips the lid, and puts one in his mouth. 

I grin. For the first time in months, I feel a little more like myself.

Eugene lights the cigarette with the Zippo I hand him; leans the end of it into the flame before taking a breath through it, and then passing it onto me. I can’t wipe the smirk from my face. “Who knew you were so committed to road safety?” I murmur, turning my attention back to the road, back to the exit the GPS is prompting me to take. I hear him flip the lighter shut, hear him slide it back into its place in amongst all the trash nudging up against the gearstick. “You don’t want one?”

Eugene laughs, and I’m too busy watching the road to look at his expression but sometimes it’s nicer to imagine. “Nah,” he says, and I wait. He’s a thoughtful guy, I’m realising. Needs a little time to talk. The wolf is still inching its way up my throat, and the attraction I felt for him last night is back in full force. It’s a strange feeling, desire not fuelled by alcohol. You’d think it’d feel emptier, shallower, but in a way it’s _better_. Sharp and clarified; I don’t want to look away from his face for a second. I want to make him laugh. 

I should read his book.

“Merriell,” he says, and my stomach twists pleasantly at hearing my name in his mouth again. Not impacted by the bad feelings of last night, by my exhausted anxiety around all that wine. Absently, I file away a potential little joy to pour over later. “Let’s go for coffee, lunch, whatever.” He waits a beat, and then adds, “Whatever you want.”

I’m off the exit ramp now, the road clear and free a straight stretch ahead of me, so I take the opportunity to glance at him. He’s staring down at his hands in his lap, messing obsessively with the corner of his phone case. Leisurely, I take a drag from my cigarette, and turn my eyes back to the stretch of empty road. It makes sense this would play out in a car. There’s something so intimately un-intimate about two people facing away from each other. “Okay,” I answer, and surprise myself with it. My mind hadn’t been completely made up when I opened my mouth, so the word just slips out. Like my brain has decided to take the backseat it normally does and let my dick do the talking. Figures. “Dinner, after your signing.” And then, hastily, “But I get to choose the place.” He laughs, and I turn to grin at him, one hand on the steering wheel and the other bringing my cigarette to my mouth. “How does that sound?” I ask, and he shrugs, and nods.

“Sure, pretty good.” His ears are pink. “You’re gonna be drivin’ me around all this week, better think of a good way to thank you for it.”

 _Yeah, I can think of a couple ways_ , I think, tapping my ash out the window. The wind whips it away. I think of Bill with his head on the desk back at Codex and almost laugh as I wonder what he’ll say if I tell him about this. Burgie won’t believe me. Resolutely, I file this away as today’s little joy. Eugene will say my name again tomorrow, I can use that one then. I itch to text Jac, and then stop myself. Sober myself. The wind rushing through the cracked window vibrates through the interior of the car, louder than the radio station I’d settled on. No point in getting carried away with this, even though every inch of me wants to. Is it obvious I haven’t really been into anyone since I got sober last? Can Eugene tell? Want feels like a live wire coursing through me, foreign but pleasant at the same time.

“Are you enjoying yourself here?” I ask him, and then, because I’m feeling buoyed up by the real human emotions I’m experiencing, I offer, “When I first came up here from Louisiana it depressed the hell outta me. Too much rain.”

I can hear the smile in his voice. “Rains a lot down there too.” And then, before I can speak, “Okay, maybe it’s different. At least if it rains in New Orleans it _rains_.” 

“We don’t fuck around,” I agree, and drop my cigarette butt from the window. 

Maybe Eugene and I got off on the wrong foot. Maybe he doesn’t care that I don’t care much about his book. Maybe he doesn’t care about my opinion on him. Maybe he’s gonna forget what a huge coffee-stained fool I was when he first laid eyes on me and maybe I’ll get to kiss him like I was almost compelled to the night before. The thought frightens me, actually, as much as I don’t want to admit that. Lights a little fire of anxiety right below my ribcage. I can’t remember the last time I hooked up sober. Is that sad? No, it’s okay, I know it’s sad. I’ve gotten close a couple times, and chickened out at every single opportunity. I wonder if the same will play out between Eugene and I. Am I getting too far ahead of myself? Probably, but it’s hard not to with the smell of him in my nose and that weird calm presence of his in my car. 

I traipse around town while he does his signing; call into a couple bookstores just to see what they’re stocking, strike up a little conversation with the owners. It feels easy to, today. Like I’m getting into the swing of things again. A month back at work and I’m still struggling to find my feet; I’m not the most convincing sales rep out there but at least I’m honest. Honesty gets you far in this sort of gig anyway. I buy an overpriced coffee and drink it sat in the coffeeshop, some pokey little hipster haven with Japanese jazz playing over the speakers. Overpriced ham sandwich number two, though this one is a little less dry than the airport fare. I wish I’d brought Eugene’s book. I hadn’t even gotten to hear him reading it last night because I’d been so goddamn preoccupied. I remember that rhythmic lilt to his words. Quickly I tap out a text to Jac and then leave my half-finished coffee to the table, the crusts pulled from my sandwich littering the plate. 

It’s a split second kind of decision. The bookstore Eugene is doing is signing at is maybe two blocks away, but I don’t know the town well and I’d wandered pretty extensively in the hour or so of free time I knew I had. It’s drizzling again, that specific kinda Washington drizzle, and I turn the collar of my jacket up against it as I fight the flame of my Zippo to the end of my smoke. For some reason, it feels urgent to make it back to the bookstore in time to hear Eugene read. Maybe because it feels fake to sit and eat dinner with him tonight with no idea what kind of writer he is. 

It’s four blocks, in the end, thanks to my piss poor navigation skills. I push open the front door to catch Eugene mid-sentence; I see his eyes flick from the page in front of him. Cursory, distant. And then again as he registers my face just a beat too late. 

“ — the water rose to meet him, green and dirty and stinking faintly of sulphur. He gives thought to just —” he stumbles at that moment of recognition. I grin at him, give him a thumbs up that he misses from how quickly he drops his eyes to the page again. “To just what exactly is in the water he’s opening his eyes into for a moment, before a movement catches his eye and he turns —”

His ears are pink. I’m still smiling when I slide into a seat at the back of the cramped little bookstore, propping my ankle on my knee as I settle in to listen. It’s warm inside, that drowsy kind of warmth that always comes with rainy days, and for a while I lose myself in it. The company, the quiet room, the rise and fall of Eugene’s speech. He’s a good reader, just as I thought he’d be when all I could hear were the shapes of the words, muffled and spilling into the dark parking lot of the previous night. And a good story too, all the good meaty bits tucked in here and there amongst the crime plot that I still find a little dull. 

It occurs to me, as I watch Eugene speak, that this is the first time I’ve ever really looked at him. Properly _seen_ him head on, seen his face in motion for more than a few seconds with nothing else to distract me. Not sidelong from the driver’s seat of the car. Not across a dark parking lot, or a too-bright arrivals hall for a split second. Just him, and me, the warm yellow light of the bookstore and him stood up at the front with his brows bunched in emotion as he reads from his book. The room feels even smaller than it is in the wake of my realisation, like the floor has shrunk to pull my chair closer to him, like I’m not one of many turned heads towards him. I’m rapt. Not a thought in my head, just my eyes on his expressive, animated face, the way he’s gesturing with every other word. Those slender, pale hands. Like they’re telling a second story, a secret one that lies underneath the story he’s telling with his words. Then he catches my eye, and I know I must look stupid and slack-jawed because he smirks into book and his voice wobbles a little with a laugh, and the feeling of his affectionate amusement towards me coming through for the whole room to hear makes me feel warm all over. Like a blush right down to the tips of my toes. Fuck, I feel giddy — drunk. Like when you take that first warm mouthful of whiskey and it burns your throat but you feel it hot in your chest, in your belly, and it spreads out psychosomatic to every little inch of you. Like the drink has joined your bloodstream straight from your mouth. 

I miss it, but something about this feels even better. 

————

I hadn’t noticed when he first climbed into the car, but he smells different today. Maybe the heat of the bookshop had warmed up the cologne on his skin. Maybe he reapplied it in the bathroom when he’d dashed in there as I’d gone out to warm up the car. Maybe he’s a nervous sweater and what I think is cologne is really just the smell of him; something different to that clean laundry smell he’d filled the car with the day before. Something spicy and citrusy that reminds me of a concoction my mother used to brew on the stove the morning before we were meant to have guests. Vanilla and blood orange and a huge lemon all cut up and simmering in the water. Maybe not so sweet. Maybe not so cloying.

“You should’ve told me it was set in Louisiana,” I say, as I switch lanes. He hums, something thoughtful in the noise.

“I didn’t wanna seem like I was tryin’ to pander to you.” He clears his throat, and I watch him twist the onyx-set ring on his finger before the glare of traffic coming up on my ass drags my attention back to the road. “I know you weren’t interested.” He doesn’t sound self-pitying, or reproachful, which I like. I like an artist who can understand that every person on the planet can’t like their work. 

I can’t respond and tell him I wouldn’t have thought it was pandering. He has a look on his face like he knows what I’m thinking anyway, so I just say, “I liked it. Even though I don’t like crime.” His expression melts into a smile and he turns away from me, eyes to the dark world outside. I want a cigarette but I don’t want to roll down the window, don’t want to banish the smell of him from the car, so instead I just ask, “Have you ever been?”

“Sure,” he says. “Lived in New Orleans for three years, in the French Quarter.”

I’m itching for a smoke, but so far unwilling to give in. The little detail about Eugene is cute, surprising, enough to make me laugh. “Hey, small world.” I wait until he looks at me, until I can see his face turned towards mine out of the corner of my eye. “I lived there too.”

He makes a noise of surprise. Over our heads, the traffic light switches to green, and I ease my foot off the clutch to get us going again. I know exactly where we’re going, and the idea of him not knowing is a thrill in itself. I feel like I haven’t been in control of something like this in a very long time. 

“For how long?” he asks, and I’m so preoccupied with thoughts of the dinner ahead of us that I’m confused for a moment, long enough for him to prompt me; “How long did you live there?”

I have a broad country accent. I wonder if he picked up on it, or whether he just thinks I wasn’t born in New Orleans because I live here now. I guess people never really leave the city, I guess I’m some outlier. “Five years,” I say, and don’t factor in the collective year or so I’ve spent at my sisters’ drying out. I can feel the follow up question coming, and save him the breath by adding, “Just needed a change of scenery, and this place seemed like the furthest I could get from home while still staying on the same continent.” 

I don’t bring in what brought me out here. I don’t tell him the months of depressive holing up in my apartment that led to this move. I lived above a pet shop in New Orleans, oddly enough. Full of scabby little kittens with their eyes half open, fleas jumping from them to me. Better than a bar, though, even if it was only a tiny bit less sad. The owner never let me buy one; he knew exactly what I got up to above his head, knew exactly what was wrong with me. Back then I was young and stupid enough to pass it off as just being into the party lifestyle. I was a firm regular at the leather bar across the street, though that was more for the cheap liquor than the mass of sweating white daddies in leather jockstraps. No one there ever told me I needed to take it easier. It took one hot weekend in which I couldn’t leave my bed from molly induced vertigo that made me decide I needed a change of pace. I’m prone to these moments of lucidity, and have learned to trust them in a way. It was one of those moments that led to this exact burst of sobriety, after all.

It was the heat that got me outta the south. Could never stand being hungover in the heat. Funny that drink keeps bringing me back to it. 

The diner we pull up outside of makes Eugene raise his eyebrows. All pink and green strip neon and shiny chrome — an overgrown airstream pumping the savoury smell of fries and hamburgers out into the street. Tucked away between a dentist’s office and a hairdressing salon, its neon light spilling out into the street like ink. There’s a couple smokers hogging the rickety metal picnic bench outside, the sweet smell of pot a perfect foil to the grease being pumped from the kitchen fans. I can already sense the imaginary notebook being scribbled in by Eugene, who is taking everything in with a kind of eagle eyed sharpness that tells me this is a new kinda scene for him. I nudge his arm with my elbow, the both of us stood silent in front of the warm bonnet of the car. 

“You good eatin’ here?” The night is cold, colder than the last few nights have been. I shove my hands into the pockets of my coat and hunch my shoulders, the cold air making smoke of our breaths. His dark eyes flick over my face, the pinkgreen neon making pools of colour in them. 

“Is it good?” he asks, and I grin.

“Good drunk food,” I say, and his brows raise up again, enough to make me scoff and nudge him again. I keep thinking of his hands making stories in thin air, the low easy roll of his words. I’d liked his story, I’d really liked it. “I’m joking, c’mon.”

Inside is busy for a weekday night; mostly bunches of young men and women, the odd lone older man nursing a cup of coffee, the strip lighting washing them out grey. I make a beeline for a booth at the back, the one right under the blinking blue beer sign, the one I always get when me and Burgie eat here. The sign buzzes, the noise half-obscured by the low chatter of the diner, and the booth creaks under Eugene’s weight as he slides in opposite me. Our knees touch. I feel lit up all over with the ghost of the feeling of being in that room listening to him read. One head amongst many. I feel almost normal.

Sticky laminate menu in my hands. “This place makes the best fuckin’ milkshakes I’ve ever had, and if you ask for the strawberry they give you it even though it’s not on the menu.” 

Eugene is looking at me with something equal parts reserved and affectionate in his eyes. I don’t know whether to puff up or shrink away under its weight. “Sounds like you come here a lot.”

“Best place in town,” I murmur, scanning the menu like I don’t already know what I’m getting. “Fuck all that overpriced health food shit. The body needs oil to keep goin’, huh?”

He hides his smile behind his own greasy menu. “Not sure if that sounds right to me.”

We order; chicken club with fries for me, burger with the side salad for him. I resist the urge to make fun of the salad until it arrives, a sad, wet little heap of halfway wilted lettuce with some cherry tomatoes rolling around on top. The look on his face makes me laugh, something light and happy blooming open in my chest. God, to think I could feel like this again. He wrinkles his nose and I grin at him, just as my phone buzzes in my pocket. I ignore it.

“You enjoyed that tonight?”

He hums, brow furrowed as he picks a cherry tomato from his salad and pops it in his mouth. “Kinda,” he mumbles around it. “Reading out loud makes me anxious.” I remember our conversation the night before, the one where I made him annoyed by being honest. I’m spared from more honesty as he pipes up again, and adds, “It was nice that you dropped in though, I was surprised to see you there.”

“Didn’t miss the first one out of wanting to,” I say, watching him closely. This is the first time I’ve seen him up close like this, the first time we’ve shared the same space without the two of us facing forward. Like the bookshop times one thousand. I watch his pale eyelashes dip, his mouth working around the cherry tomato. His jaw is rough with reddish-brown stubble; I wanna scratch my fingernails through it, want my face tender from it against me. 

“I figured,” he murmurs, tugging on his earlobe. His ring flashes in the neon lighting.

Silence drops between us. I manage to tear my eyes from him long enough to eat half my club sandwich, a handful of fries. Eugene is picking through his salad like he’s about to find a crisp leaf in there any second, and I watch him do it for a while before I turn my attention away with a snort, away to the dark street beyond the windows. It’s started raining since we’ve been inside, and the rain on the glass reflects the pink neon, the sweep of a cars headlights before it passes and the street is quiet again. The jukebox kicks on some song by The Rolling Stones, and I catch Eugene’s eye as I glance away from the window. Dark eyes, doe eyes. It sends an unfamiliar thrill through me as I realise he must have been watching me as I was turned away. 

“I mean what I said earlier,” I murmur, spinning my mug of coffee around so the handle faces me. His eyes flick away from mine; away and then back, and I’m captivated by him from this angle. The pale freckles on the bridge of his nose. The wedge of a chickenpox scar at his temple. “I liked the story.”

“Do you often take clients out?” he counters with, avoiding my compliment. For some reason it’s funny to me that he seems so genuinely uncomfortable with the whole rat race of popularity. It makes me wonder why he publishes in the first place, why he doesn’t just sit at home and tap out a couple stories just for the joy of it. Eugene knocks the top bun of his burger off, and slowly and methodically peels the pickles inside from their bed of mustard and burger sauce. I’m mesmerised.

“Only the ones who make such a meal of a goddamn burger,” I murmur, and snatch the pickles from his plate before they can even get comfortable. “Gene, c’mon, who the fuck takes the pickles out?”

“They’re gross,” he replies, overly prim as he settles the bun back over his burger. He wipes his fingertips on a napkin, eyes on me as I pop the offending pickles into my mouth. “So do you?”

It takes a second, and when I realise he’s prodding me for a real reply I roll my eyes and settle back into the booth, arms crossed over my chest even as I fight to keep a smile from my face. “Why d’you ask?”

Eugene takes a bite from his revamped burger and chews slowly. I fight to keep my foot from tapping. Again, my phone buzzes, an insistent little vibration against my thigh, and again, I ignore it. It’ll be Bill, being obnoxious, or Burgie, lightly teasing me —

“I just wanna know if everyone gets the same treatment so I can work out where this is going.” He’s got this quick, dry way of speaking. Like he’s biting the end of his words off a little too soon every time. It makes him sound serious, and it’s this which has the beat of silence that follows his words growing and growing between us as I struggle to work out if the guy is _joking_. Then his mouth twitches and his eyes narrow, thumb to his mouth to lick at a smear of ketchup he’d gotten on himself. I can’t keep my laugh in.

“You’re a surprise,” I say, and mean it. 

He grins into his plate, eyes dropped to the tabletop so I can’t read his expression too well. Then they flick up and I find myself pleasantly pinned by them, the needle of his attention slid easily and smoothly through my chest to bury itself in the old foam of the inside of the booth seat. I shift a little in my seat just to test it, just to see how fast his attention sticks. The needle stirs between my ribs. 

“Do you do this a lot?” I ask, over aware of my mouth, my throat. The beer sign buzzes insistently by our heads, my food growing cold between us. Eugene’s mouth quirks, and I commit the movement to memory, silently thrilled by the fact that I’m getting to watch his facial expressions as they come to him. Attraction is an energy between us. The pink neon light is warm on the side of his face, the green almost sickly. 

“What,” he murmurs, “make a meal of my food?” 

I snort. “You know what I mean.” Mentally, I’m already in the ‘Personal Life’ section of his Wikipedia. Not that I didn’t know he was gay not long after we met but simply to find out if it’s common knowledge. It makes all the difference. Excuse the metaphor, but this would not be my first rodeo in sleeping with a closeted up-and-coming writer. It’d be my first sober rodeo, but not the first by far. Am I getting ahead of myself? He’s insinuated his knee in between mine at some point, and I can’t stop thinking about having it at the crux of my legs. I haven’t felt attraction like this in a long time; it’s so thick between us I can practically taste it. How did I miss it? 

He takes a sip of his coffee, grown cold just like mine is, I’m sure. I can tell by the way his mouth puckers, his nose wrinkles, that involuntary expression of disgust. “Only after I get taken out for bad hamburgers.” 

“Ha ha,” I deadpan, watching him take another sip. “I introduce you to the best food Olympia has to offer and this is what I get?” 

“If this is the best on offer then I’m worried,” he murmurs, expression playful. I’m chewing on the inside of my cheek to keep my smile in check. “So do _you_ do this a lot?”

I bare my teeth. “I asked first.”

We could go back and forth like this for hours, I can tell. Eugene’s got this stubborn little secretive streak to him that I didn’t pick up on until now. I like it. This dumb kinda back and forth is a very specific kind of foreplay that I can’t help but enjoy; it butts up right against that part of me that has a hard time separating a fight from a fuck. Or maybe it’s not so aggressive as that. I just find it hard to bring my dick into the equation if I haven’t had to deal with a thorough game of mental cat and mouse. Maybe that’s why sex when I was drinking got so boring and frankly so depressing; there’s little two drunk people can do but slur at each other until you both fall into bed before someone’s dick wilts under all the whiskey. 

Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t relent. “I was just asking about dinner.” His smile is small, chin propped on his hand. “What were you talking about?”

Jesus Christ, my dick in my stupid tight pants. Of all the days to wear the jeans I shrunk in the wash two years ago. I can’t stop thinking about his knee between mine. For some reason it’s conjuring up that scene from fucking _Flashdance_ , of all things. My sister used to watch it incessantly when we were growing up because she wanted to be a dancer. Can’t understand why my momma thought it was appropriate for a thirteen year old to watch. That goddamn scene in it, with Jen Beals in that invisible tux, the dirty-sexy way she eats the lobster, her foot on whats-his-name’s dick. Listen, you don’t have to be straight to jerk off to _Flashdance_.

“So you wanna come back to mine?” I ask, because I’m done with my food and the evening is getting later and later and Eugene is driving me crazy, sat opposite me with his big brown eyes and his dark red hair. That long flat line of his mouth. It curves in a smile; a real one, and then he’s laughing, sitting back in his chair and putting some much-needed space between us. I hadn’t even realised how we’d been leaning across the table. No wonder the old waitress in her candy pink pinafore hasn’t been around to top up my coffee. I don’t lean back, not ready to relinquish the closeness yet. 

“I don’t do this often,” Eugene says, an air of finality about him. He picks up his coffee and drains it, places it right back in the sticky ring it made on the Formica. “You’re very handsome.”

I grin. That wolfish feeling is back, claws hooked at the back of my throat. Burgie tells me I look at guys like I’m gonna eat them, and I kinda believe him when I feel like this. “I’m going to drive you back to your hotel in a minute, aren’t I?”

Eugene tips his head to the side, expression almost fond. I wish I could read his thoughts, wish I could get a handle on him. “Well it’s that or I’m walkin’.” 

Six months ago I would’ve pressed the point; flirted and flirted until Eugene made it back to my apartment. So that we wouldn’t be able to make eye contact for the rest of his time here. We’d be in a bar, not a greasy spoon; I’d be countless drinks deep and Eugene would be pink and flushed and swaying into my chest. He’d fuck me and maybe he’d stay or maybe he’d call an Uber, and all the tension and attraction between us would deflate just like that. God, my sex life was boring. I’m not sure I’ve ever really realised why until now. 

Eugene is still looking at me, almost as if he’s trying to work out how I’m going to react. Isn’t it funny to see yourself through someone else’s eyes? What’d he think I’d be? Annoyed? I gather my coat up, hands finding my car keys which I pull from the pockets with a rattle. My dick is still half-hard and feeling very fucking ignored right now; I will it to just chill out as Eugene follows my lead, slipping from the booth with his jacket in his hand. I leave a few bills on the table, linger close to Eugene as he leans back over the booth to grab his cellphone. That thrill which comes from standing close enough to touch, close enough to feel the heat of his body. When he straightens up its practically into my chest, and the look of genuine surprise on his face melts almost instantly, eyes dropping to my mouth before he steps away.

“I’ll drive careful,” I promise, motioning for him to lead the way. He rolls his eyes but moves, and I follow him with my eyes on the straight, broad set of his shoulders, slipping a cigarette from my pack as we go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! and being patient with the wait between chapters, i've had a pretty full on few weeks! but i handed in my final assignment today, so hopefully will get to spend plenty of the xmas break writing :~) hope u enjoyed!!!


	3. wednesday

My sister is standing in my doorway. Hand to the doorframe, temple to the back of her hand, only — no, there’s a phone to her ear. That’s what she’s leaning against. Her face an insensate smear in the darkness. Hall light catching her from behind so I can see her curls all frizzed out and stressed like a halo around her head, but nothing of her expression. The set of her shoulders is tired. 

Wait, my sister is standing in my doorway?

“— Like Dad was,” she’s murmuring down the phone, and her voice sounds like it’s coming from miles away. Blurry and staticky and fading in and out, like a radio with bad reception. I watch her shift, watch her hand move to her forehead, watch her lips move on words that I don’t —

I wake.

The ceiling fan is a still, looming shape over my body. I blink at it, mouth dry and throat sticking as I try to swallow and cough instead. The room comes back to me in increments as I prop myself up to grab blindly for the nearest liquid I can find. Flat, room temp Coke. My window, hanging orange in the darkness. The dark, hunched figures of my furniture. 

My doorway, empty.

I flop back onto my mattress, pressing a hand through the sweat in my hairline as I stare up at the ceiling. That cheap, popcorn texture to it. Yellow from my smoking and the previous tenant’s smoking and all the smoking before that. The ice machine in the bar is rumbling away below the floorboards. Is that what woke me? I shove my hand under my pillow for my phone; blind myself with the screen a second later. 

_Jackie O: you never gave me an update, dude_

_Jackie O: still alive?_

_Jackie O: you owe me two joys tomorrow. better be good_

I toss my phone to the other side of the bed and hunch into a ball on my side, back to my doorway, eyes on the indistinct shape of my desk through the dark room. I still feel half in the dream, still disorientated, my sister’s crackly voice still reverberating through my head. I haven’t dreamed about Millie for a long time. 

The streetlamp outside my window turns off, bathing the room in true darkness. Half asleep, I think of Eugene, I think of the vodka in the freezer, I think of the jerk off session I had when I got home that I now feel kinda skeevy for. My thumb in his mouth, his fingers inside me. I’m half-asleep and drifting, thoughts racing, and then the room lights up beyond my closed eyelids. Orange in the dark, the motion sensor on the streetlight outside. The clatter of glass into the trash. 

Did I dream a memory I forgot in the haze of withdrawals or did my mind invent that all on its own? The way the Jim Beam would bump up against my knuckles, rocking around in that moulded plastic car ashtray that was just a little too small for it. One of my earliest memories is that of my dad vomiting in the kitchen trash. Millie would have been five. Ten when he died. How does she remember? Or is that my dream substituting my memories in dream-Millie’s head?

I text Burgie, blinding myself with my screen again. _was that you taking out the bottles?_

 _who else would it be_ , comes through a minute later. And then, _come downstairs_.

He’s sitting on the bottom step of the stairs that lead up to my apartment when I emerge, sweater shoved on over my bare chest, legs cold in only a pair of boxers. It’s evident he hasn’t slept yet; it’s there in the puffy bags under his eyes, the smell of liquor on him. Burgie doesn’t drink. I feel like it’s an important thing about him to note. Everything you need to know clicks right into place after that. Straight guy who doesn’t drink manages a gay bar. I know, it’s baffling. 

“You stink,” I say, settling my ass down on the cold wooden step. 

He hums, and accepts the cigarette I offer him. “Can’t sleep?”

I grunt around my smoke, fighting the wind as I try and get it lit. “Mm, no. I slept. Woke up.”

“Yeah?”

“Dreamt ‘bout Millie.”

He points at me, smile big and shit-eating. “Didn’t I tell you?” I shrug, and nod, rolling my eyes, and Burgie settles his back against the wall. Nods to himself. “I told you.”

“I’ll call her, man. I really will.” I tuck the hand that isn’t holding my ailing cigarette into my armpit, chasing any fragment of the warmth of my bed. “Jesus, it’s cold. Why’d you drag me out here?”

“I sensed you were up and something was going on.” We watch a car go by, one headlight out, its presence lopsided with it. “Like that scene in Matilda.” He waits a beat, then, in that very Burgie way he has. Head tilted, eyes averted. He knows how to manage me so well I sometimes wonder why I pay Jac to listen to me bitch and moan. “Are you okay?” 

I huff, laughing on an exhale of smoke. “You really are that nun, huh?” But Burgie doesn’t reply, just chuckles and rests the crown of his head back against the siding of the building, and I watch him for a moment before I add, “I’m alright.”

His eyes are closed, but his mouth quirks at that. Lit from the side by that orange-yellow streetlight. Something about the scene feels almost unreal, and maybe it’s because I’ve so recently surfaced from such a vivid dream that part of me still feels like I could be still dreaming. Burgie’s normally home by two a.m. I’m normally either asleep, or awake and nervous in my apartment. I take a drag from my cigarette, and Burgie mirrors me. Only the cold is telling me that this is real, that this is happening. The cold, the smell of the damp wooden steps under us, the beer I can smell on Burgie’s clothes. Beer, but punchier, grosser — the swill from the plastic bar mats he has to dump out at the end of the night. 

“I really need to call her, don’t I?”

I watch his eyebrow raise. “She sounded pretty upset when I spoke to her.”

“There’s different kinds of upset, Burg.” I lean forward over my knees, a little dart of panic in me now, shaking me out of my dreamy sleepiness. “What, sad? Angry?”

“Nothin’, just pissed off, I guess.”

The thing about Burgie is that nothing phases him too much, but at the same time he can be the most highly strung guy on the planet. I don’t know how he does it, it’s some real Jungian shit. The guy smokes like it’s a sport; I always thought I was a smoker — have been since I was fourteen — but Burgie crams so much high intensity smoking into maybe forty-five minutes of his day that it makes even me feel breathless. Right now he’s lighting a fresh one off the butt of his old one, his own cigarette pulled from his own pack now, a familiar crease between his brows.

“What’s got you here so late?” I ask him, because it’s out of character, and Burgie rarely does anything that I don’t feel I couldn’t predict with a good two week head start on him. He grimaces, knee drawn up to his chest now. Making himself comfortable like he isn’t wearing nothing but a thin t-shirt in the Washington October cold. 

“Rich didn’t show tonight,” he murmurs, and draws on his cigarette. “He’s been in and outta the emergency room the past few months. Makes me nervous.”

I make a noise, uncomfortable. I always hate hearing shit like this from Burgie; makes me think of how he felt when I was all fucked up. “You ain’t responsible for them,” I say, though I know I can’t do nothing to convince him of that. It’s a double edged sword. If he really believed that, would I even be sitting here right now? I think of his fingers down my throat, bellyful of vodka and pills — a memory which isn’t even really mine at all. Borrowed and reworked and made to fit from the things he told me about that night. It hadn’t been a serious thing. No more serious than the times I’d crawl drunkenly into the bath just because it felt safe, and dig away at the crook of my elbow until I saw red. 

Burgie clears his throat. I wonder if he’s thinking along the same lines as me. Together we watch a car crawl by, and I know we must look ridiculous to the driver, if he’s even looking. I always assume they are. “You ever wonder why you’re still at it?” I ask, and he shoots me a look I can only just make out. The streetlamp overhead is throwing his face into deep, craggy shadow. I think of my sister in the doorway, the halo of her hair. “The bar, I mean. You ever thought of packin’ it in?”

He snorts, and cigarette smoke catches in the yellow light, hanging there for a second before the breeze whisks it away. “No, never.” He taps ash through the railings. “All my goddamn money’s tied up in this place. Couldn’t pack it in if I wanted to.”

“You ever think about delegating?” Burgie’s my age; couple years older. Too young to have lines around his eyes like that, lines that he hadn’t had when I first met him. “Gettin’ somebody else in?”

The question seems to stick in him strangely; I watch him squint, and exhale. “Sometimes,” he murmurs, the end of his smoke flaring in the dark. My own is clutched forgotten and smoking away between my frozen fingers. Then his eyes meet mine and his brow creases, and he asks, “Why d’you ask?”

I glance away, out down the quiet street, the rows of squat little houses. Telephone wires making webs in the sky, only just darker than the night itself. “I dunno,” I say, just to avoid admitting I worry about him. “Got a lot on my mind.”

Burgie makes a sound of surprise, pitching his cigarette butt away from him. “That’s candid of you,” he says, and what I can see of his face by the light overhead is teasing, playful. I roll my eyes, not really feeling up for it but trying hard not to let it show.

“Yeah, yeah, I told you; you caught me outta this dream I was having.”

“Right, about Millie.” Burgie doesn’t reach to light another cigarette. It’s a silent little hint that it’s bedtime, finally. “Nightmare?” He’s already shifting, cracking his knuckles between his knees quick like gunshots. _Pop pop pop_. So gross. 

I take a drag from what’s left of my smoke, grimacing at the heat of the smoke, the cherry burned down right to the filter. “Kinda.”

“Well,” Burgie says, and stands, an air of finality to his voice. “Call me if it’s a full nightmare next time, okay?” He always manages to get that edge of caring into his teasing. I nod, and wave him off.

“Yeah, yeah, alright,” I settle back against the step some more, drawing my bare legs up to my chest as I watch him take the few steps to the ground. “Get some sleep, you look like hell.”

“Says you,” he retorts, but then doubles back on himself, jogging up the steps to give me a kiss on the crown of my head that I groan at but don’t duck. “See ya tomorrow, Snaf.”

I linger outside on the steps for a little longer, smoking a slow cigarette as I let my mind ease away from my dream. I text Jac back: _big joy, had a date_ , and after a lot of writing and erasing of the message, I shoot my sister a text too. _sorry I haven’t called. busy with work, u know_. I don’t know why I lie. Sometimes it just feels easier than confronting the real reasons why I’ve clammed up on her — why I’m always clammed up on her. She’s seen me in a lot of states. It’s hard when you only see each other when one of you is a shaking, detoxing, depressive mess.

 _— Like Dad was_ , I think, forehead to the palm of my hand. I wonder if Eugene is up. I wonder what would happen if I went to that perfect, ice-cold bottle of vodka in my freezer, whether anyone would be able to tell just by looking at me that I’d drank it. My cigarette is burning low to my knuckles; I flick it away just to extinguish the urge to let it burn me. Sometimes I feel so exhausted in these small hours of the morning that I feel like a different person; like the good day I’m so fresh from never actually happened to midnight-me. Exhausted by my mood swings. Exhausted by all my damaging childish urges. In the morning I’ll wake and go for a drive, come home and draw the blinds and sit in the dark and smoke, and read. No work on Wednesdays. But that’s day-me, whoever the fuck he is. Right now I’m lighting a new cigarette because to go back into my apartment will mean drinking that vodka, and my feet and hands are so cold I can barely feel them, so cold I fumble my lighter a dozen times before I get it lit. 

My phone lights up, trembling with the vibration of a text on my bony knee. _Can’t sleep, hotel room too cold._ And then, a heartbeat later, _Have you read my book yet? ;-)_

——————

Morning comes. No little joy just yet. I slept maybe three hours max after my dream the night before; curled up in the armchair by the window with Sheba taking up all the room on the sofa opposite. Eugene’s book in my lap. I wince my way through a shower hot enough to ease my spasming back from the deadly combination of being almost-thirty and sleeping in a goddamn chair all night, and then drink a cup of coffee, and another, a cigarette rounding out my breakfast. Sheba blinks at me from across the room, regarding me with that distinct catlike expression of distaste, until she spots me reaching for her food and leaps down to come wail at my feet. 

My back twinges as I lean down to feed her. At the moment it seems like everything little thing that happens to me serves to remind me I’m getting _old_.

A few years ago I’d developed a healthy distrust of my bed, and it’s proven a hard thing to shake. Back then it was because I used to get a lotta sleep paralysis, which the internet told me was because of my drinking but Jac told me it was just because I’m crazy. Okay, not those words, but that’s what she was trying to say. So I took to sleeping semi-upright in the armchair after I realised it never happened to me there. Spent so many nights in that chair I swear my back was beginning to settle at a right angle. I _ached_. I started dating a fucking personal trainer because he was good at massaging the knots outta my neck. 

Last night was the first night since I stopped drinking that I spent in the chair. I try not to take it as a sign, and instead busy myself with beginning my uneventful day. I take a bath just to ease my muscles, up to my chin in the hot water with Sheba’s tail flicking irritably through it. Like I make her sit in here with me. Like if I put her outside she wouldn’t yell at me until I let her in. My cigarette turns the small room hazy, the flimsy little bathroom fan doing little to shift it. Cosy, just the sounds of water and the distant street outside. The bar isn’t open yet; no second-hand music downstairs to interrupt my silence. Just me, my thoughts, and my cat. 

I wish I’d brought Eugene’s book in here with me. I’d gotten into it pretty nicely last night (this morning?) trying to fall asleep; the guy really knows how to paint a picture. I consider texting him for a minute, before I talk myself out of it. Still vaguely perturbed by his late night text, by the way he’d brushed off my advances at the diner. I’d been kinda hoping for some of that vaguely dirty sex that comes with fucking a near-stranger; both of us all wrapped up in my sheets with barely any of the inhibitions that come into play when you really give a fuck about the person you’re having sex with. I thought maybe he’d had the same hope, but maybe not. I’ll have to wait to see him tomorrow and figure out if that tangible spark of attraction I’d felt between us at the diner is still lingering. I hope it is. 

Now my mind’s on the topic I can’t keep away from it. 

I wonder if he’d fuck me or whether he’d like to get fucked himself. I wonder whether he’d be rough or gentle. I wonder whether we’d go back to mine, or back to his h/motel. Both are pretty attractive in their own ways. Motel sex is always something else, in my experience. Either awful or so good and uninhabited that it makes you wish you lived in one full time, or some other equally crazy thought. But thinking about Eugene in my own bed has my dick perking up hopefully against my belly, thinking about that warm, musky smell of his skin on my sheets, all mixed up with my own smell. I palm absently at it, one hand crooked dry above the water with my cigarette smoking away towards the ceiling. Sheba has relocated; I spare a glance at the doorway just to make sure. God, is there anything worse than your cat catching you at it?

Eugene’s eyes on me, his knee between my knees. I’d gotten off last night to the thought and then ruined it for myself by waking up from that dream and getting all caught up in myself. My sex drive has wilted since I kicked alcohol. Not that it was very strong while I was drinking but that means I really mean it when I say it disappeared. So it feels good to feel turned on again. Am I thinking too hard about it? I tug at my dick, just teasing myself a little as I reach over to crush my smoke out in the soap dish. I want him like I haven’t wanted someone in a long time, and I don’t know why but I don’t really care. I imagine those big, pale hands of his on my skin, imagine them in place of my own hand, and that’s when I start to get real invested in this whole unplanned jerk off session. My head knocks back against the edge of the bath, eyes closed as I imagine his nose pressed to the hair at the base of my dick, his eyes flicking up to meet mine with the whole hard length of me down his throat —

My phone buzzes, rattling loudly on the cistern; I’d put it there before undressing for my bath. I ignore it, knee out of the water and the air cool on my skin as I shift, the water sloshing against the sides of the tub. I grunt. Water is a goddamn shitty lube but I can’t afford to be picky, I just squeeze at the head of my dick and push my hips upward into my hand as I lose myself to the fantasy. Eugene’s fist in my hair. It’s been so long since I’ve sucked a dick that I’m sure I’d cum right there on the spot if I got the chance to. My phone rattles on top of the toilet again. I imagine it’s him, I imagine he somehow knows what I’m doing with his name in his mouth, I imagine him encouraging me, filthy-hot shit in that particular cadence his voice has. The sharp, bitten-off ends of words. His dark brown eyes and that hint of stubble on his jaw last night, the way he’d pinned me to my seat and hadn’t let me go until it was time to leave.

My mind offers me the particular jack-off fantasy from the previous night; so quickly, so sneakily that it catches me unaware. Eugene’s mouth at the nape of my neck, hot breath, his fingers curling hard and vital inside me. The sound I make bounces off the tile walls of the bathroom; the kinda moan that’s impossible to keep in, that’s wrenched up from right down in your guts. My hand on my dick, faster now. Arousal a pulse in my head, a swooping kinda electric spark in my belly as my mind takes the fantasy and runs with it. Eugene, Eugene, Eugene. Jesus Christ, I haven’t been so hot for somebody in so long — 

My hand grips tight at the cool edge of the tub as I cum, a moan caught in the back of my throat. Dick jerking in my fist as I press the crown of my head to the wall behind me, eyes squeezed shut at the wash of my orgasm. Shaky breaths. Fingertips aching with how hard I’d gripped hold. 

The room comes back to me in increments. The lukewarm, previously-gross but now-disgusting bath water. My phone, ringing in earnest now. Or is that my ears? No, that’s definitely —

The ringtone I assigned to Jac so I could properly screen her calls.

I curse, all the sweet cottonwool-ball-headiness of my orgasm gone in an instant as I lever myself up from the tub on rubbery knees to lunge for my phone. I fumble with it, the screen not recognising my wet hands, stood stupid and naked and cold with my dick still half-hard when I finally manage to pick up.

She speaks first. “You’re missing your appointment.”

“Hey, Jackie-O.” I clear my throat, still feeling flushed and lethargic. “Mornin’ to you too.”

“Merriell,” she says, and I wince. “We’ve been meeting Wednesday mornings for three years.”

“My night was good too, thanks so much for askin’,” I try, though I’m unable to quite hit the right amount of blasé and Jac isn’t having it today besides. I grimace at myself in the cabinet mirror, the silence stretching on and on before I have to finally break it. “Okay, okay. Sorry, Jackie, I forgot. Honest mistake.” She still doesn’t respond; it’s a tactic of hers. I can practically hear the clickclickclick of her pen. I buckle. “I didn’t sleep well,” I murmur, quietly, turning away from my reflection. I shift the phone so I can hold it between my shoulder and my ear as I reach for a towel. “It’s thrown my day off.”

I hear her sigh. “We can reschedule this week.” It’s the closest to relenting that she gets, but from here on out is wobbly ground. Gotta watch my step. I just hate to hear her disappointed. 

“Sure,” I say, voice low like somebody could be listening. It’s stupid. I like our conversations happening within the four walls of her office, that weird little white noise machine running outside the door. Nothing but me and her and silence, and all the weird tchotchkes she collects. Maybe I’m just finding it hard to make the switch from beating my dick to talking to my fucking therapist, Jesus. The last twelve hours have kinda been a rollercoaster.

“Do you feel you need it?” she asks, and I catch my reflection’s eye as I turn to take a seat on the edge of the bath. The vulnerability on my face makes me cringe inwardly. 

“Yeah,” I bite out. My dream. My sister. The vodka. Eugene. I need to unload it all and have her sift through the guts of it all for some meaning. 

There’s a beat of silence from her end. I picture her sat at her big dark wood desk, her planner open in front of her and the ragtag little army made up of deceptively comfy armchairs and a huge plush sofa. “You’re lucky,” she says, and she sounds a little less annoyed now. Maybe I’d caught her on a weird morning just like she’d caught me on mine. “Drop by around four, I had a cancellation.”

“Four,” I parrot back to her, before we say our goodbyes. 

“Bring me a joy,” she says, and when the call disconnects I drop my phone into the sink so I can dig my fingers into both my eyes. Hard enough to see fireworks on the black of my eyelids. I heave a sigh. 

Is the universe trying to tell me something by ruining the good energy of every beat-off session I have about Eugene? How many times does it have to happen before I can call it a pattern?

——

Therapy depresses me today. It doesn’t always, but I always leave it feeling fragile, so it’s not a far leap for it to send me down a sad little lonely spiral. No reason for it. Jac asked me once if I find being depressive and withdrawn (her words, not mine. I’d use unpleasant) easier than being anything else. I don’t remember replying. 

I park the car badly; skewing up to the curb to let the bumper slew into the road a little. I can’t be bothered to fix it, just grab my jacket from the backseat and my smokes from the cupholder, beating a quick path back to my apartment before Burgie can spot me and drag me in for a chat. It’d started raining while I was driving; that real, heavy rain that soaks you in a second. Like the skies have just opened up and let go. Deafening on the roof of my car, on the little tin-topped porch that shelters my front door at the top of the steps. I take a seat there, ass parked on my dirty coconut doormat, and watch the rain as I light a smoke. 

_Would you say drinking has been on your mind more than ever lately?_ Jac had asked today, to which I’d picked at my cuticles just to avoid her eyes, and nodded. Silence, from her. Clickclickclick. Her idle pen. I’d willed myself to be honest, really sat there and told myself over and over how this shit doesn’t work if I lie to her but lying is all I have and it’s a hard thing to give up. Isn’t it obvious I have a hard time letting go of things that feel good? Burgie used to tell me I’m ‘too fucking honest’ but really he meant I was mean, he just didn’t have the words for it. Honesty isn’t being tactless. Honesty isn’t being rude. Honesty is making eye contact with myself in the mirror. Honesty is being able to look away from my bleeding cuticles to meet Jac’s gaze and say, _yes, more than ever, more than since the last time I relapsed, so much so that it scares me to be alone in my apartment, so much so that I —_

I ash between my feet. The rain is coming down so hard I can see it bouncing off my steps, and I hope that Sheba isn’t out in it though I know she knows better. Probably curled up warm in my bed, just like I should be. Not out here shivering away in the shelter of my porch, the sky steel grey above me. The rain like white noise in my ears. I can hear music playing over the rush of it; distant, dream-like, shuddering out from the bar. Elton John, which means Burgie is probably cleaning the lines, getting ready to open for the evening. It drifts up through the rain-noise, blue and tender and full of melancholy. I think of my sister. I think of Eugene. Absently, I press my thumb to my wrist, hands gathered at my knees with my cigarette smoking away into the rain. Trace the raised round burn scar there. Years old. 

_Yeah,_ I’d told Jac. _Yeah, it’s hard not to think about it_. And she, of course, had scribbled something down onto her notepad and then she’d leaned forward over her lap, fixed me with that earnest look of hers. Blue eyes small through her thick glasses. Necklace winking in the purposely-dim lighting that therapists’ offices always seem to have. _And what are your recovery skills? What ways do you intend to cope with the feeling of needing to drink?_

I inhale hard on my cigarette. Elton John croons away beneath my feet. Jesus, wasn’t he an alcoholic too? I fight the urge to open Google. 

Instead, I text Eugene. _I live over a bar_.

 _???_ , he texts me back, moments later. 

_That’s me inviting you out tonight_ , I respond, cigarette wobbling in my mouth as I tap out the message. Then, as an afterthought, _don’t worry, bartender won’t serve me._

I finish my cigarette as I wait for him to respond, which takes almost enough time for me to completely call off the vague idea of how I thought this night would go in my head. Elton John has switched over to Neil Young now; I can only imagine the great time Burgie is having in there, mopping floors or whatever other shit he gets up to alone. A car goes by, tires on wet asphalt, and I watch its taillights blur red through the low evening light. Light another cigarette. In my head my session with Jac bounces back and forth like a screensaver; mindless, irritating, constant. When my phone buzzes on the step next to me I grab at it, so relieved for the distraction that I forget to care whether Eugene is responding yes or no. 

_Okay, you be designated driver ;-)_

————

Mentally, I think I’m a little all over the place right now. I am, aren’t I? The hum of the refrigerator fan. The smell of cigarette smoke clinging to my hair. You wouldn’t believe what burning skin smells like.

Nevertheless, here I am. Crazybrains or not, Eugene is once again in the passenger seat of my car, and he’s wearing that hideous orange sweater, and he smells like clean laundry, like warm skin, like sleeping in late and waking warm and sweaty, like hanging up your fresh wet clothes to dry, like — 

“I feel like I’ve spent more time lookin’ at the side of your head than the front of it.” 

I grin around my smoke. “You been lookin’?”

I can tell I’m not feeling right by the way Jac looks at me. Sometimes I think she has a better grasp on my head than I do. I brake for a red light, then run through another, the roads clear and dark and empty around us. Streetlights shining yellow and amber off the puddles and the wet pavement. Jac would fucking murder me if she knew my plans for the night. She ‘heavily disapproves’ when I visit Burgie during work anyway (her words), and literally ‘wishes me dead’ when I centre social stuff around the bar (my words). So maybe she’s not exactly a mind reader yet, because I was half set on this date about fifteen minutes into our session today.

“I want you to know I’m callin’ this a date in my head,” I tell Eugene, who laughs, and I sense him turn to face me out of the corner of my eye. 

“You been thinkin’?” he quips, and I roll my eyes, a smile tugging at my mouth. 

“I’ve been known to.” I wait a beat to see if he’s gonna respond, and when he doesn’t I add, a little self-consciously, “What, you ain’t callin’ this a date?”

I can hear his smile when he replies; a quick glance to the side shows the streetlights on his teeth, his fingers hooked in the high neck of his sweater. “You always say everythin’ that pops up in your head?” Coy, flirtatious. My heart beats double-time in my chest. If only he knew the process of filtration my words go through. I suppose it’s a talent, in a way, to make it all seem so completely stupid and off-the-cuff as I seem to. 

“I try.” 

Eugene settles back into his seat. I wonder, urgently, if he’s enjoying himself here. How he feels about this crazy little tour of the West coast that he’s taking. It’s a strange slipslide of a thought to chase down, as it occurs to me that we’ve never really gone beyond chatting since that time he got pissed off at me in the car, and once that coalesces into me blurting, “I don’t think I know a thing about you.”

It’s a lie. I’ve read his Wikipedia page. I know he’s thirty-one and that he was born in Mobile, Alabama. I know he has one brother and two parents and that he’s openly gay and that he was nominated for the Man Booker but didn’t win. I know that he did a degree in English Lit and half a degree in Illustration, and I know that he lives in San Francisco and is a Novelist, Journalist, and Travel Writer. Citation [1], [2], and [3]. I don’t know why I need to know more just to take him home and (god-willing) fuck him, but the need for knowledge has always been an irritating little thorn in my side. 

Silence. The wet road under the car’s tires. “Well I don’t think I know a thing about you either,” he says, and I look nowhere but the road this time. “Is that such a bad thing?”

“I think it is.”

Absently, I press the cigarette lighter down. Once, my daddy had burned himself on the one in our family car, the one with the permanent Jim Beam fixture. Pressed the tip of his thumb to the coil to check if it was hot. I’d checked if the scar was still there when I’d gone to see him before the funeral, laid out pale but rouged in his coffin, the round scar gleaming in the tastefully low funeral parlour lights. Nestled like a valley in the calluses of his hands.

“Well,” Eugene murmurs, as I pull up to the curb outside the bar, outside my house. “We’ve got all week.”

Between us, the cigarette lighter pops up, coil wicked and red-glowing as I touch it to the end of my cigarette and drop a wink in Eugene’s direction. “You wanna let me watch you drink a boilermaker?”

And to my delight, he laughs.

———

Burgie makes us sit at the bar. I think it’s half so he can keep an eye on me, because old habits die real hard with him, and half so he can watch Eugene and I. I don’t blame him. Last guy I brought around was probably the fucking personal trainer, and you can imagine how unmatched we were. That thin thread of his shoulder massages keeping us together, all six feet muscular something of him and five scrawny feet eight of myself. So yeah, pure nosiness from Burgie and little else. I don’t think he really believes that Eugene and I are actually here independent from business, but Burgie pulls him a beer and and pours him a shot nonetheless, and keeps his eye on us in between customers.

“I read your Wikipedia,” I say, watching closely as Eugene takes the shot in one neat little movement, back of his hand to his mouth as he winces through the burn. The wolf is crawling up my throat again, no amount of Pepsi can chase it down. “So don’t bother with whatever you wrote on there.”

“You think I write my own Wiki page?” he asks, with a laugh. That disarming smile of his, transforming his face. “I don’t, for the record. There’s probably some diehard out there keeping tabs on me.”

“Am I gonna show up on there then?” It’s a flirt, nothing like a real question, though Eugene answers it earnestly anyway.

“If they’ve followed me out here they’re more diehard than I even give them credit for.” He takes a drink of his beer, and I watch his profile, watch as he scratches at the stubble on his face before he adds, “Now that sounds bad…” His face twists rueful, and I laugh.

“Too small town for you?”

The beer sign over the bar reflects green in his eyes, which crinkle with the smile he sends my way. Both of us sat as close together as barstools will allow for; knees touching, leaning forward over the sticky bar top into each other’s space. “I’m from outside Mobile, really,” he says, conspiratorial. I grin. “But I guess Wikipedia doesn’t know everythin’.”

It feels completely novel to be in such a good mood in a bar without a few drinks under my belt. It used to take four to get there, a few more to maintain, but then a couple more on top of that would send me down the other side. I used to get hammered to go on dates, for the same reasons I used to get tipsy for conventions. Nothing smooths conversation, or selling, like drink. That’s why it feels like such a genuine joy to be sat here, knee to knee, making conversation like a normal fucking person. Flirting, like a normal person. I watch the jet in Eugene’s ring catch the light as he lifts his beer to his mouth, and then catch his hand as it comes away from the glass, cold and wet from the condensation on the outside of it.

“Nice ring,” I comment, and Eugene doesn’t withdraw his hand, just twists his wrist, letting the jet face up towards the ceiling.

“My daddy’s.” 

I snort, turning Eugene’s hand over to glance absently at his palm before I release him. “You don’t hear that a lot ‘round here.” At his wide-eyed look of bemusement, I add, “Daddy, y’know.”

“The south feels like another world,” he agrees, hand still lying between us on the bar top like he wants me to take it again.”You ever think about goin’ back?”

“Oh, I go back,” I murmur, and then chuckle, caught off guard by how funny his question is. Eugene quirks an eyebrow at me, his expression sweetly bemused as he shifts on the barstool, hand going for his beer. I grimace, and extrapolate. “My sister lives in Louisiana, still. I stay with her sometimes.”

“That’s nice,” he says, and I just hum, watching him take another drink of his beer. He presses his thumb to the corner of his mouth to catch a bead of it, and then adds, “I haven’t been back in years.”

“Oh yeah?” 

Across the bar, I can feel Burgie’s eyes on us. I can almost feel the grilling I’m gonna get from him already; late night, watching him take stock of the bar as he questions me relentlessly. Luckily I have other plans for how this night is gonna end — Burgie will have to wait, though I’m sure he’ll text me until he gets some answers. I wonder what he thinks of Eugene. I wonder what he thinks of me hooking up. Am I getting ahead of myself? Eugene is talking, and I’m only half-listening, wrapped up in my own imaginings of what Burgie is gonna say. _You brought him to the bar? A client?_ It’s not the first time it’s happened by far, but it _is_ the first time it’s happened during a stint of sobriety. I’m sure that means something, but I don’t think I’m in tune with myself to know just what yet. Jac would know for sure. 

“— Less than tolerant, so,” Eugene shrugs a shoulder, and I tune back in. “I go back for holidays. They like showin’ me off to their friends so it’s kinda wearin’.”

I like how he talks like he’s just gotten off the flight from Alabama this morning. I like how he hasn’t dropped his accent in the handful of years he’s spent living outside of the south. I don’t think mine’s gone either but my sister says it has, and I guess compared to her maybe my accent has waned a little. “At least you’re the town big-shot now,” I say, and take a gulp of my soda. Eugene is looking at me when I set it back down, big brown eyes very warm in the low lights of the bar. Black, they’re so dark, and so strange in his pale face. His dark red hair, his stubble, his lashes catching the lights set above the bar. I swallow. “You always wanted to be a writer?” The question is out of my mouth before I can process it; I’d meant to say something different. Something like, _god, you’re handsome_ , or _come upstairs with me_ , but I guess that stubborn self preservation of mine had to step in at some point.

Eugene tilts his head, eyes off across the bar as he seems to ponder the question. That serious set of his mouth under his long nose. “I guess it’s somethin’ that just kinda happened to me,” he murmurs, tapping his thumbnail to his glass. “But at the same time I can’t imagine doin’ anythin’ else.” Then he looks at me, really looks at me; gaze sharply curious. I shift on my stool, wary. “Does that make me one of those people who just sat down and decided to be a writer?”

I almost laugh, I really do. “You’re still on that?” I ask, and Eugene rolls his eyes but his expression barely wavers. He’s serious. I can tell by the slight furrow of his eyebrows; this has been on his mind since I said it, tongue loose in his calm presence. “You know, I weren’t bein’ serious when I said that.”

“I feel like you were.” His tone is challenging, but not unpleasantly so. My attention sharpens; this is exactly the shit I like. The wolf, back again, though I think he never left. Claws hooked in my uvula, attraction towards Eugene a heavy and encompassing feeling. “So does it?”

“I’d have to read more of your work.” I realise as I say it that I’ve made a mistake; his brow quirks, and before I can let him know all about the fifty or so pages I’ve read, he’s laughing. 

“So you did read it!” 

He’s so pleased that I find I can’t tell him I only started it this morning. Instead I turn back to my sad Pepsi and try and look caught-out. “Yeah, yeah, I read it,” I mutter, “Don’t look so smug about it.”

He’s grinning; that wide, transformative smile. “I ain’t smug, just pleased. You can tell me if you think I’m just any old ‘decided one day to be a writer’ writer.”

“Jesus, you really don’t know how to let go of shit, huh?” I find myself grinning too, passing a hand over my jaw just to try and disguise it slightly. “Alright, I don’t think you are, but my point still stands, okay?”

Already my mood feels lifted from what it had been this afternoon, even with a bright green bottle of absinthe staring at me like it knows me from the wall behind the bar. Maybe this was a good idea, shit. Maybe I’m engaging in something Jac wouldn’t frown and scribble in her notepad over. She’d asked me for a joy earlier, at the end of our session, which I hadn’t been able to supply her with but now I’m just thinking I needed more time. This is the joy, right? Talking and laughing with a guy, in a bar, like a normal human being. 

“It stands,” Eugene says, then, and he’s still smiling in such a way that I decide right then to read another fifty pages tonight just to be more honest. “Even if I think it’s a pretty reductive thing to say.”

God, he’s handsome. Looking at him now, not in the seat of a car, not from metres away in a library, I’m really realising it. It’s enough that I miss a beat, I don’t reply in time, and it’s only when I see his big doe eyes curve in a smile do I realise, and scramble for a comeback. “You wouldn’t believe the amount of books I’ve read to form that opinion,” I say, quickly, and he’s smiling, and looking at me like he’s really interested, really listening. My heart is in my throat, throbbing slick right there behind my tonsils, and I find myself captivated by the way his eyes catch the light. Black dark until he turns and the light hits them through and turns them so deep and richly brown I can’t look away. 

“Did you always want to work in publishing?” he asks, and I watch him do a double take; eyes sliding over my face briefly, unthinkingly, before hitching back on there. His gaze softens. I can feel his attention everywhere; my hands, my throat, my mouth. “You have pretty strong opinions about writing,” he adds, and I make a noise of disagreement. Even once I glance away I can still feel his gaze lingering on me.

“Well, I’m a big reader,” I say, cagey. “And publishing pays me enough to keep a roof over my head and I like the people I work with, I like working with books, so.” I shrug, and Eugene’s full attention is on me now: I almost feel bowed from the weight of it. “I kept at it.”

“I feel like it was a little personal.” Eugene is really digging now. I pull a face.

“That’s on you.”

He laughs, like me being a little rude is funny. I look away, back to the absinthe, away from his curious expression. “You said you fell into publishing,” he says, and I frown. Did I say fell? I’m pretty sure I didn’t say fell. Mentally, I track back through our conversation; it feels like it happened days ago, not hours. But before I can get back there he’s talking again; asking, “Have you thought about doin’ somethin’ else?” I shake my head, and watch him smile. “Okay, what would you do in your dream world?”

I slide my Pepsi from one hand to the other, the water from the condensation sending it sliding slickly over the wooden bar top. “Fuck, I dunno.” Burgie’s got Neil Young playing over the speakers, and I’m wondering absently if he’s feeling okay. Harvest means that Burgie is pretty much fully spiralling, if he puts it on during a shift. 

Eugene nudges me, then lays a hand on my forearm. I almost jump at the contact; look quickly to him, but he’s just smiling, teasing, like he hasn’t been the first person who isn’t Burgie who’s touched me in months. “No thinking,” he says, and I watch his mouth move. “Just say.”

It’s hard not to think. I let my mouth carry the words right outta my gut, and I don’t know why because it’s nothing I’d ever do without being drunk but somehow it feels okay in this moment. “I’d write,” I say, and see his expression change. I decide to make a joke out of it before he can process it as a not-joke for too long. “If I could string a sentence together. Ha.”

Eugene doesn’t take the bait. To be honest, I didn’t think he would. It was a half-assed attempt to take the sincerity out of my words, and I don’t know him well but but I know him enough to believe that Eugene is nothing but into sincerity. As it is, he smiles, and pats at my forearm once again. I fight the urge to pull away, willing my arm to stay still on the bar top. 

“I knew it,” he says, and I roll my eyes.

“Sure you did.”

Burgie breezes by; swaps Eugene’s empty glass for a full one, and quirks an eyebrow at me as he does so. I give him two raised in response, to which he flicks his eyes left, before disappearing. _How’s it going? Good. Go away. Fine, be that way._ It’s special, to have friends. 

“Am I drinking on the house?” Eugene asks, and I almost spit my soda back into my glass.

“I don’t even drink on the house, and Burg had me working here for nothin’ ’til I got too sick.” I nudge the shot glass of whiskey that Burgie had covertly placed on the bar, and grin at him. “Go on, it’s on me anyway.”

I don’t tell him that I’ve racked up a bill with Burgie that I’ll probably only pay off when I’m dead. Maybe he’ll even bury me with it, just for laughs. Burgie knows very well he’s not getting the money outta me, just like how he knows he enabled my drinking for too long before he finally put his foot down. Swings and roundabouts. Eugene drinks the shot, and I watch him in a way I’m very aware of as voyeuristic, thank you. 

The night falls comfortably into conversation. He doesn’t ask me any more about my vague aspirations for writing, just as I don’t grill him too hard about anything else. We talk about home, we talk about memories; all the stupid things I guess we think make up the sum of ourselves. I tell him about the time my sister wrestled with me so hard I lost a baby tooth. He tells me about the time a squirrel bit him in the park, and he spent weeks wracked with the idea that he was gonna get rabies. Unflinchingly, I tell him about the Jim Beam in my daddy’s truck. The night wears on. 

He’s drunk, by the time he checks the clock. He’s good at handling it; I wouldn’t be able to tell if I was anyone else. It’s there in the heaviness of his eyelids, the very faint drag to his words. “Jesus, it’s almost midnight.”

“Almost Thursday,” I say, watching as he scrubs a hand across his face. He’s loose in his seat, legs spread, posture relaxed all slumped over the bar. Silently, I envy him for his comfortable drunkenness, the way he’d said a polite no to Burgie as he’d gone to pour him another beer. I had none of the restraint — _have_ none of the restraint. If Burgie had asked me what I’d wanted when I was four or five beers deep, I would’ve asked what’s the biggest glass he had. “You got anything on tomorrow?”

That’s enough to make Eugene laugh. “Shouldn’t you know?” 

All around us the bar is winding down. People packing up to leave, people paying out their tabs. Just me, and Burgie, and a handful of the old regulars hanging around. And Eugene. With me. Quickly, I do a mental walkthrough of my apartment upstairs, even as I say, “I’m more of a fly by the seat of my pants kinda guy.”

Eugene chuckles. “Obviously.” 

We flee outside for a cigarette, even though we can smoke inside. It’s more to escape the inside of the bar for me, than anything else. Eugene steals a smoke from me which I take as the payment he deserves for huddling in the cold with me, and I light his up before my own, holding the flame of my lighter to the end of his cigarette until he steps away. He doesn’t go far. The two of us standing at the foot of my stairs like we both don’t know what’s about to happen. 

“I’ve got a reading in Seattle,” he offers, and I groan, even as he leans in close to me, shoulder bumping against mine. Again, that spark of attraction between us. I pull hard on my cigarette, and then straighten up. Nothing has come from cowardice, right?

“You think you’ll be good to make it?”

His eyes are very dark through the night as he sways into my front. I grin, and don’t move; let him move as close as he likes. “I dunno,” he murmurs, hand and cigarette at his mouth, the other hand tucked into his jacket pocket. “We’ll see how this goes.”

“And how d’you think it’s gonna go?” I ask, very aware of him huddled in close to me, very aware of my apartment upstairs, of the midnight hour. It’s cold out, the rain thankfully abated but the air still holds that sweet, rainy scent I always associate with the Pacific Northwest. A green kinda wetness. I take a drag from my cigarette, just as Eugene catches at my wrist, fingers very cold against the pulse of my blood at my wrist. 

“How do you think?” he asks, fingers sliding up into the warmth past the cuff of my coat —

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \------ and so midnight turns!! catch the rest of it on THURSDAY , when i upload it at Some Point Next Week God Willing. hope you enjoyed! lemme know what you think! i'm on tumblr @ getmean if you wanna keep with updates :~)


	4. thursday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> reminder, this follows immediately on from last chapter!

— To rest cool and light against my rapid fire pulse. The cigarette burn scar. I smile at him, and shift just enough that I can crowd him against the side of the bar and slip his fingers away from my scar in one motion. 

“I have some ideas,” I murmur, sliding the toe of my boot in between his feet. Eugene glances down, and then back up, eyes sliding over my face as though looking for something there. I wonder what he sees. “You wanna come upstairs?”

He seems to give it some thought, which is curious. I thought the trajectory of this night had already been plotted out from the moment I texted him. But Eugene is proving more surprising than I think I gave him credit for that first day we met. I touch my hand to the back of his hand, big pale things in the darkness. The streetlamp nearby buzzes, gnats and moths flickering in the orange light it throws over us. My fingers find the warmth of an inner wrist, the softness of a palm, and then Eugene’s fingers curl over my own. 

“Just for one drink,” he says, playful, and I watch in a strange sort of delight at the expression which flickers over his face as soon as he registers his words. The squeeze of his eyes closed in embarrassment, pure foot-in-the-mouth regret. “Sorry, of course you don’t have alcohol in your —”

I laugh, and tug on his hand, which is now locked tight around my own in rictus shame. If only he knew how much alcohol he had in my apartment. “C’mon, before Burgie catches us out here and starts gossiping.”

He follows me up the steps, the wood creaking under our combined weight. I know he must be getting over his embarrassment pretty quick, judging by the, “Wow, so you live in a treehouse,” comment he throws me as we pause at the top of the stairs. 

“Ha ha,” I mumble, bracing my foot to the bottom of the screen door to keep it open as I fiddle with the key in the lock. “Very funny.” Then his hands find my waist, waiting there crammed behind me on the tiny landing, and my heart jumps up into my throat. He hasn’t even kissed me yet. Somehow, the anticipation for that is greater than anything else which could follow. 

Sheba’s face is at the door when I open it; I nudge her out of the way with my foot as I inch inside, Eugene on my heels and already cooing at her before we’re even over the threshold. He disconnects from me quickly, crossing the room to follow Sheba in all her stuck up, bottlebrush-tailed glory. I can still feel the weight of his hands at my waist, the way he’d squeezed me quickly, familiarly, before he’d moved away.

“Who are _you_?” he’s saying, voice all high pitched and delighted, as Sheba swings her tail at him. I snort, recognising the signs of an impending attack better than anyone else. Sure enough, when I turn away to hang my coat on the back of the door I hear a yelp, and then a curse. “Ow!”

“You gotta let her come to you,” I say, turning back to watch Eugene come up from his crouch in front of the sofa, cradling his hand to his chest. I laugh. “Did she get you good?”

“Good enough,” he says, down in the mouth as he casts a wistful glance back at the cat, who has her back to him now. I recognise the posture well. “Figures you’d have a mean cat.”

I gape at him in mock-affront. “And what’s that s’posed to mean?” 

He grins at me, shrugging out of his coat as he crosses the room towards me. “You know,” he murmurs, laying it over the back of the sofa, before turning away from me, attention caught by my bookshelf. “Now this is a weird collection,” he adds, after a beat, resurfacing from the book spines to glance at the room as a whole, eyebrows raising. “Actually, this place is a little crazy.”

“It’s the walls,” I say, leaning back against the kitchen counter to watch him look around the room. It is; they’re overwhelming. Bill and I had painted them arsenic green when I’d first moved in as some dumb attempt to brighten up the place, the both of us a little drunk and sweating through a close August afternoon. It had worked, in a way; the room couldn’t be called ‘dull’ anymore after that. It’s funny, seeing a room through a stranger’s eyes. I haven’t really taken notice of my walls in years. 

“Yeah,” Eugene says, turning a slow circle on the spot. “Yeah, they’re really something, huh?”

I try and see what he’s seeing as he gravitates towards my mantel. The fireplace it brackets is useless with no chimney; instead it houses a spider plant that I rarely water, which chokes the space. Candles sit fat and white on the top of it, wax dripping messily onto the wood. Maybe it’s weird. That shit stains the wallpaper black. Does he focus on that? Or is he just trying to get some measure of me from my place? 

“These are nice,” he comments, and I refocus, slide out of my nervous thoughts. He taps at one of the carved wooden animals that cluster amongst the candles. “Real nice.”

Why am I freaking out at Eugene looking over my shit? Like it even means anything. I let it go; take a big deep breath and lean up against the kitchen counter, watching quietly as Eugene sets his ass down on the arm of my sofa and begins tugging at his laces, eyes still roving around my apartment. No use in trying to see it how he sees it; it’s impossible to disconnect myself from the place to look at it objectively. The stain on the rug, red wine that never came out and never will. The little carvings he likes so much, souvenirs of long hot evenings spent on my sister’s porch with a knife and scrap wood, trying to keep my hands busy. Just works me up to have people in my space. Makes me self conscious in all the ways I don’t wanna be. I don’t know why. 

Instead I watch Eugene, see him amongst my furniture, trying to engage with Sheba again, and as I do I feel my muscles ease. My earlier hopelessness is long gone, and with this final little hurdle stumbled over and past, I’m feeling good. More than good, that’s such a bad fucking descriptor — I feel anticipatory, and seen, and attractive. Eugene’s hand on my wrist, on my waist. He hasn’t touched me since I shut the door behind us; is he scared? Does he know that drawing it out makes me want him more? The want is a sharp shard in my stomach, reminding me of its presence with every move. 

_I’m glad I’m sober for this_ , I think, and then stop dead. Eugene is still cooing at the cat. The room is only lit by the cooker hood light and by the street; he’s half-shadowed in the darkness. _I’m glad I’m sober_ , I think again, deliberately this time, shifting around in all the meaty messy weird shit inside me to make sure this thought is authentic. My hand comes away clean. I feel sharply glad to be here, in this moment. The hard edge of the counter against my lower back, the smudge of Eugene across the room. 

I can’t think of the last time I had that thought and really believed it. I don’t think I’ve ever truly meant it. I let myself feel it: a tight warmth in my chest that blooms bigger and bigger the longer I dwell on it. 

It’s then that Eugene looks up, on his knees next to the sofa with his hand sunk in Sheba’s fur. Accepted. The high neck of his ugly orange sweater and his big brown eyes above it. The sight makes me feel warm; battling with the feeling of the gladness in my chest. And Eugene must see something on my face because as I look at him I see his expression change. Eyes softening even as the rest of him seems to sharpen, to coil up with some undetectable tension. The set of his shoulders, an odd spark of something to him, now. 

I swallow. The refrigerator fan hums into the silence. Eugene picks himself up from the ground and crosses the room to me, and what fragment I see of his expression before he kisses me is tender, open, wanting. Briefly, madly, I wonder what he saw when he looked at me, but then his hands slide up and over my chest to cradle my jaw, and my thoughts flatline into a comfortable, wordless buzz.

Have I ever been kissed like this? Deliberate, slow, and soft. My face held like it’s something special, like I’m something special. His thumbs stroke over my cheeks, rasping over the stubble there. Eugene is clean shaven today. Looks like I won’t be getting my mouth stubble-tenderised after all. 

My hands find his waist, bunching in the thick, soft fabric of that sweater, pulling him into me. Eugene makes a noise against my mouth; something soft with surprise, like he didn’t expect me to reciprocate. We sway together. Locked up close in the pool of light the cooker hood throws, his fingers ten firm points of pressure against my face, the skin of his hip warm when I dip my fingers past where I’ve clutched at his sweater. Again, I feel that urgent pulse of gladness for my sobriety. This wouldn’t have happened if I was drunk; Eugene’s mouth on mine, his kisses sweet and unhurried like he could stand here and kiss me for hours. He’s warm and solid against my chest, his body softer than I thought it’d be. I love those sweet little surprises. He huffs out a half laugh, half moan as I pull him harder into me, hands slipping from my jaw to my hair, tugging in the overgrown curls there. Then it’s my turn to laugh/moan, at that. I break the kiss, and Eugene follows my mouth; mindless, blind, hands clutched up in my hair. So I kiss him again, my dick perking up in my pants as Eugene grazes my lower lip with his teeth. 

Shit, have I ever been kissed like this?

I pull his hips to mine, finger hooked in his belt loop, just so he can feel how hard he’s making me. It makes him huff out a noise that could be laughter or arousal, but then we’re stumbling back a couple paces until my back hits the countertop, Eugene’s mouth insistent on mine and his hand now clutching hard at my waist. Pressing himself up against my front.

“You make me so hot,” I murmur, as soon as he breaks the kiss, nose nudging at my cheek as he kisses my jaw. This time it’s a laugh, definitely a laugh, because he’s grinning once he comes back into focus. So close to my face he’s just a long nose under brown eyes, and the room is so dark and his pupils are so blown they’re black. 

“You really do say whatever comes into your head, huh?”

I grin, pinch his hip. _No, I don’t._ “Is that a problem?”

He shrugs, and crowds me against the counter again, presses a kiss to my jaw, to the corner of my mouth, his hands curling in the front of my sweater. “I like it.”

“Good,” I say, and it’s all I can manage because he kisses me again, and I can feel him hard against my hip, and he smells good — musky and masculine and just right, so good I wanna just spread him all out in my sheets until my bed smells like him too. 

It’s a push and pull to the bedroom, the two of us stumbling through the darkness of my apartment, hands pushed under clothes, lips and teeth clashing as we kiss, as we laugh. Twice I have to fight Sheba out of the room while Eugene sits on the bed and laughs at me. It feels good. Fuck, it feels good. I’d be happy to not even have sex, that’s how good it feels. I feel like a normal person, like a regular fucking guy, even when I get this low pulse of anxiety once the bedroom door closes behind me and it’s just me and Eugene and my big unmade bed.

A beat of silence. His shoes are off; no socks. Bare toes flexing against my cold hardwood floor. I’m half-glad the room is dark, nothing but the streetlamp outside to illuminate us, because I know intimately how goddamn messy the room is. Again, that slow roll of anxiety. That familiar precursor to a good old sober chickening out. 

Then Eugene grins, and he gestures to me, that same soft, unknowable expression on his face as I’d glimpsed earlier. Can he sense my nerves? How is he such a good read of me? Nobody is, not even myself. “Come kiss me,” he says, and for a second I’m embarrassed that it must be so obvious that it’s been a while. But his expression is open, wanting, his body language all loose and comfortable, and that settles me somewhat. Not seeing anything but me; not seeing all the shit which goes through my head every second of the day. 

He undresses me, and I undress him, and somewhere in the middle of all that my nerves dissipate and the spark kicks back up between us. I’m not sure if I’ve ever been attracted to a person like this. Not without that veil of alcohol muddling me up. My mouth feels bruised from kissing. I put my hand between his shoulder blades and Eugene goes easy, easy, easy, face into the pillows. Red hair dark in the dim room, against my white sheets. Some small part of me wishes for light, wishes I could see all the parts of him I don’t know yet. Wanna know if he has moles, wanna know his scars, wanna take him all in. But he’s just pale skin through the darkness, darker now the street is quiet and the light outside is dormant. I fuck him close and urgent, mouth at the knobbly top of his spine just so I can feel his moans rumble up through his back and into my chest. That slick, hot, intense kinda sex that I’ve missed so completely that I don’t ever want it to be over, don’t wanna stop until his smell is my smell and my smell is his. Want my sweat on him, want his spit on me. 

Afterwards I half-doze in the balled up sheets as I listen to him washing up in the bathroom, the shower running like rain in the next room over. Brain and body all shut down at the same time; a rare thing, and something I’m chalking up to how good the sex was. I press my face into my pillow, feeling warm and sated and comfortable as I edge closer to sleep, my thoughts blurring out and out until they’re nonsensical. 

The bed dips. I come awake, drifting upwards through the thin layers of sleep. Eugene, smelling like my soap, naked and still damp as he fusses himself into bed next to me. We don’t speak; he just kisses me, hand curling against my throat, comfortable and close, and I kiss him back until sleep drags me back under.

———

In the morning, Eugene leaves, and I spend a leisurely hour in bed thinking about him. The early morning sunlight is pale blue and diffuse through the blinds, my room cold but my bed warm and smelling of him. Sheba joins me, and I pull the sheets up over my bare shoulder and sink my face into the pillow so she doesn’t see me smiling like a fool. I drift in and out of sleep, that hazy liminal feeling before your alarm goes off and ruins your whole day; when your bed is more comfortable than it’s ever been before, when you’re perfectly warm, perfectly cosy, perfectly content. 

My head is full of him. The way he’d cradled my face in his hands, the way he’d kissed me, the way he’d looked at me. Dark eyes in a darker room. The softness of his stomach, the light brown hair there that matched his long-gone stubble, the heat of his skin against mine. Pink ears, pink cheeks, pink mouth open on a moan. Lazily, I press my morning-hard dick into the mattress. He’d left me with a kiss on the forehead and something murmured so low that I hadn’t heard it, half asleep as I was. I wish he’d stayed for some sleepy, languid morning sex, but figure there’s time enough for that.

My alarm goes, because nothing good can last forever, but I surprise myself with how little effort it takes me to prise myself out of bed once I’ve turned it off. Like I’ve finally had a good night’s sleep after months and months of making do with shitty sleep. Like I’d slept deep, and hard; I feel well rested for the first time I can remember in so long it’s almost depressing. 

My bedroom smells like Eugene’s hair, his skin. When I shower, I use the soap he’d used last night, and kick Sheba out of the bathroom so I can jerk off under the hot water. She doesn’t go easy, tail all fluffed up like if I kick her out of one more room she’ll go for me. I wouldn’t blame her. Feed her a little extra wet food with breakfast to try and placate her some, then stand with her at the counter to drink my coffee and watch her eat.

“Is that good?” I murmur, voice still rough with sleep. “Are you gonna stop being mean to Gene? He might be over here again soon.”

She doesn’t look up from her bowl, oblivious to the lovesick little spiral my thoughts take a spin down as I imagine just that. Eugene, in my bed again. My head is right up in the clouds.

I skip my morning drive; instead thumping down the steps two at a time, pushing a shoulder to the back door of the bar before winding my way through the tiny scrubbed-clean kitchen, the stockroom, and into the bar itself. It smells like stale beer and lemon Pledge, the room dim with all the lights still off. Burgie, who is listlessly mopping the floor, startles at my arrival.

“Snafu,” he says, eyebrows right up in his hairline. “Didn’t expect you so early.” I shrug at him and slide into my seat on my stool, biting back hard on a grin, and Burgie’s eyes roll. “Come to gloat?” 

“I have no idea what you mean,” I say, leaning over the bar to grab at the maraschino cherries in their sticky tupperware. I know I’m not concealing my smile well, it’s easier to hide it behind breakfast. “Came down for a coffee with my friend,” I add, settling back into my seat. I pop a cherry in my mouth. “Is that okay?”

“Now I know you have a fully functional coffee machine in your own house,” Burgie says, eyes downcast as he wrings the water out of the mop. “Which is literally upstairs, Snaf.” There’s a beat of silence. My expression doesn’t change, and I can practically see the curiosity tearing Burgie up inside so I know I have the high ground here. Then he rolls his eyes, again, and slumps over to the bar like I’m not gracing him with my fucking charming company. “Fine. But you’re unloading the dishwasher.”

I unload the dishwasher, hot steam spilling out into my face as I fill Burgie in on the few fragments of the night that aren’t completely R-rated. It’s a weird feeling, because normally I’m not so forthcoming like this but something about last night and something about how Eugene makes me feel makes me just wanna _talk_. Makes me wanna tell everyone, I’m feeling so good about it. Definitely not how I normally feel after a hook-up. Burgie makes the coffee while I speak, and I know he’s interested and therefore distracted because he spoons sugar into his own coffee, and doesn’t seem to notice until he takes a sip and wrinkles his nose at me.

“I haven’t gone through with a hook-up in months,” I say, settling the last wine glass onto the shelf and closing the dishwasher door with my knee. “I don’t know what did it.”

Burgie grimaces through another mouthful of coffee. “You seemed into him. Really into him.”

I cock my eyebrow at him. “Yeah?”

“Sure, you left before close.” He sets his coffee down, and even though he likes to play grumpy in the mornings, I can feel something earnest brewing in him. And then, sure enough, those shrewd blue eyes of his on mine, the low dip of his voice. “It’s unlike you. It’s nice to see you doing something different.”

I scoff, shying away from how genuine he sounds. “I ain’t the barfly I used to be,” I mutter, and stand my ground to endure the kind little squeeze that Burgie gives my shoulder.

“I know you aren’t,” he says, dropping his hand from me as he turns to dump his sugary coffee into the sink. “Okay, c’mon, out. You got work and so do I.”

I check my watch. Burgie’s internal clock is as infallible as always; I’ve got a date with Bill’s teasing and the Food Tubes over at Codex in a tight fifteen, and with that realisation comes the realisation that I’m driving Eugene to _Seattle_ in a couple hours, hot on its heels. How did I forget? Last night, huddled up in the cold together, pre-kiss, pre-sex, pre-sharing-a-bed. And then again this morning, kiss on the forehead and a murmur I immediately forgot or maybe never even heard. _See you around noon_. 

I take the mug into the car with me after promising Burgie I’ll bring it back, even though I have a suspicion it’s actually mine; lukewarm coffee sloshing over my knuckles as I fight it into the cupholder. Swapping out addictions is serious business. It’s corny but I can’t deal without caffeine and cigarettes. My trunk is full of Red Bulls, like a teenager. If a teenager had serious student debt, an overdrawn bank account and a whole grocery list of aches and pains and awful learned habits. Ha. 

Traffic is light, thankfully, and I multitask by smoking a cigarette as I drive, thinking about what Burgie had said. _It’s unlike you._ What would being like myself look like? It’s a convoluted thought. I have such a tenuous grasp on all the various things that make me _me_ that it’s really something to sit down and push them all together, to try and work out what the sum of my parts are. Is it unlike me to drag a guy back upstairs and sleep with him? Not really. Is it unlike me to do it sober? Well, yeah, it’s so unlike me it’s fucking alien. I toss my cigarette butt out of the narrow gap of the rolled-down window. _It’s a good thing it’s alien_ , I tell myself, over and over until I think I really believe it, pulling into my space at Codex. 

Early on in my sessions with Jac, back when I was a drunk and seeing her for the night terrors, but not the drunkenness, she’d told me something I’d disliked so much that I’d cancelled on sessions for three weeks in a row. She’d gently threatened me that she wouldn’t have me back. I’d gently reminded her that I wouldn’t care. Somehow, I stuck with it, and her words stuck with me too. _You’ll never change if you don’t want it._ Back then I’d been kidding myself that there was nothing wrong with me. It had come just after I’d moved away from New Orleans, after that molly-induced weekend of vertigo which somehow hadn’t been enough to stop. I knew I was an addict. Somehow I thought that just knowing about it would be enough, like if I was able to face that then maybe everything would fall into place without me having to try. I remember mouthing it to myself in a steam-slick mirror, in the cold bathroom of the house I lived in before my current place. _You Are An Alcoholic._ Then I’d crack open a beer at eight a.m and drive myself to work with it cold between my thighs. Then I stopped cold turkey two months later because I had a boyfriend who’d cry when he saw me drunk, and because my sister kept calling me and I kept avoiding her calls because I didn’t wanna slur on the phone with her. And it didn’t stick, of course. I didn’t really believe it. Didn’t really want it, honestly. 

I rest my head against the steering wheel, closing my eyes at how urgently the past seems to be pressing on me lately. The time on the dashboard blinks at me, reminding me of my near-lateness, but I stay still. I need this. Not that I’m having an epiphany or nothing but sometimes creeping towards a realisation can knock you a little dizzy. I’ve spent a lot of time getting sober for everyone but myself. I need a moment to process the idea of doing it for me alone. 

“Last night I was sober and last night I had fun,” I murmur to myself. “Last night I was sober and I preferred it.”

_I want the change_. I can’t say that out loud, just yet. 

I’m interrupted from my quick, very necessary, little morning spiral by a sharp rap on the roof of my car. I startle, and draw myself up, half-embarrassed to be caught but mostly annoyed. Can’t a man put his head down and recite a few reminders to himself in the privacy of his own car? 

My boss taps his finger to his watch face, and then flashes two fingers at me, jerks his thumb over his shoulder. Balding, rail-thin, a pair of glasses that’d put Warhol to shame. Absently, I wonder if he’s into charades. 

“Window’s open, Chris.”

He takes a step back from the car and I watch his eyes flick over me, that prying, careful look I hate so much. I almost ask him if he wants to breathalyse me, but bite down on the urge. He’s been good to me; better than he had any right to be considering I fucked up so bad not that long ago. “Shelton, you better get into that building before me,” he says, and I wind the window down a little further. His brow furrows. “You alright?”

“Good,” I say, before I can process it. Then I nod, and double down. “Yeah, Chris, really good.” Chris’ eyebrows raise, and I don’t blame him but it’s true. _Last night I was sober and I had fun _. Not that he needs to know exactly what’s put me in this good mood, because that would mean a tense little talk in his office, which is all glass-walled so my coworkers can see me getting gently but firmly told off. I smile at him, show all my teeth. “You?”__

__“Good,” he says, slow and suspicious, but then we twos a cigarette sheltered in the doorway to the building so I know he mustn’t suspect a thing._ _

__Bill, however, does._ _

__Bill Leyden has an almost preternatural ability to tell when someone’s gotten laid. If it was anything else I’m sure people’d be calling him a genius, or at least some kinda fucking wizard. It’s uncanny. He used to know when I’d fucked someone the night before even if I couldn’t remember it. _It’s all in the walk_ , he’d say, and waggle his eyebrows at me, and I’d shove him but be kinda secretly impressed anyway. _ _

__Today’s no different. I try to skirt our side of the room when I come in, right on Chris’ heels like all eighty pounds of him could conceal all barely-more-than-that pounds of me. But the goddamn glass walled kitchen gets me, as it always does. I duck in for a granola bar, snag a Red Bull from the fridge, and when I glance up Bill is still on the other side of the glass, grinning at me._ _

__I sigh. His grin grows._ _

__He catches me as I leave, trailing behind me as I walk to our desk and slump down in my chair. My car keys join the Red Bull and the granola, then my phone, and a fistful of change._ _

__“So who was it?” he asks, salacious. I chuck my lighter into the little pile of shit from my pockets. “Shelton, c’mon.”_ _

__“Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” I mutter, even though a small part of me really is dying to tell him. That same urge that sent me into the bar this morning. I wait a beat, and so does he; I can see him out of the corner of my eye, leaning his elbow on my desk as he swivels his chair back and forth. “I can’t tell you who it was,” I say, eventually, and the premature noise of victory he makes trails off into a disappointed whine._ _

__“Shelton, who was it that hand fed you Xanax for six months? Who was it that cleaned your filthy fucking apartment that one time?” I snort, but when I glance at him he’s scowling, like he’s really upset. I know it’s an act: he normally gets what he wants outta me. “Shelton, please remind me of who it was who —”_ _

__I interrupt him. “You didn’t _hand feed_ me Xanax.” I turn away, crack the tab on my Red Bull and punch my password into the computer. _ _

__“But I would’ve if you asked,” he retorts. “Shelton, I would’ve lovingly wrapped ‘em up in cheese and fed them right into your mouth if you —”_ _

__“Bill,” I say, and turn to him, drop my voice low. “I really can’t tell you. It’ll make a fuckin’ fantastic email blast, and you can’t be trusted.”_ _

__The noise of the office fills the silence between us, clacking keyboards and the low buzz of voices. Someone across the way is clicking the button on their pen over and over, rapid-fire. I watch Bill’s expression, watch as understanding blooms devilish on his face, and roll my eyes just as he blurts, in a low whisper, “Oh my god, you fucked Eugene Sledge.”_ _

__“Shut up,” I hiss, like I hadn’t laid a trail of breadcrumbs right to the door of my little ‘secret’. It was only a matter of time; I’m well aware of my own unfortunate history with sleeping with clients. His grin stretches, devilish, and I nudge at the wheels of his chair with my foot, jolting him. “Bill, I swear to god.”_ _

__He holds his hands up in supplication. “Shelton, I won’t tell a soul.”_ _

__“I don’t believe you.” All around us the office is getting into the swing of things; I haven’t been this late in a while, and so find myself an odd step behind everybody else. Bill has swung back around to his computer screen, pulling up his email and a couple manuscripts as he goes._ _

__“Believe what you want,” he says, tone playful, unbothered. “Are you gonna do it again?”_ _

___Yes. Yes, as many times as he lets me_. “I don’t know,” I say, and then self-edit. After all, this is Bill — just like Burgie, I have little to hide from him. “I hope so.”_ _

__“Ain’t no hoping in it.” He taps a couple keys, obnoxiously hard, and presses his cheek to his shoulder to raise his eyebrows at me. “’S’all pure grit, man. Pure hard _work_.”_ _

__I laugh, and scoff. “Shut up, Bill, what d’you know? You’ve been chasin’ that girl from Sales for six months.”_ _

__“If that ain’t grit I don’t know what is,” he replies, not looking away from his screen._ _

__I let it slide, and thankfully, so does he. It’s a real toss up on whether he’s actually letting the topic drop or whether he’s just letting it go dormant until he wants to tease me again, but I never find out which it is with this one. I knock off after lunch, have a quick smoke in the cold with Bill, who trails me to my car just so his blow by blow narration of a date he went on a couple nights ago doesn’t get interrupted._ _

__“Bill,” I say, sat in the drivers’ seat with the door open, the engine running._ _

__Oblivious, he takes a drag from his smoke, eyes on the steel grey sky above us, and says, “I dunno, who has an underboob tattoo and doesn’t fuck on the first date?”_ _

__“Bill, I gotta go.” I try my best to be patient; he’s really struggling with the concept. The tit-tattoo-not-equalling-sex-conundrum. It’s screwing with him._ _

__“Shelton, it’s really screwing with me.”_ _

__I shut the door, knowing he won’t take the hint but completely prepared to drive away from him anyway. “I know.”_ _

__On the drive across town, I worry._ _

__If you can believe it, I never used to be much of a worrier. It weren’t even a thing that the drink brought out in me; when I was younger I just simply didn’t care. Nothing really felt important enough to spend hours turning over and over in my head, like I had better shit to do. Never learned the meaning of consequences for my actions. I wonder what’s changed._ _

__I worry about seeing Eugene again. I worry about what we’ll say to each other. I worry that he’ll get in the car and I’ll look him in the eye and that tangible little spark that led me to him in the first place will be gone. Just like every other time I’ve slept with someone. Should I have slept with him? Should I have let it stretch and stretch and let him go home without knowing what I do now, just to preserve that spark? Fuck, I should’ve. The road rumbles by under the wheels of the car, the breeze through the window full of the smells of a classic Northwest fall. Wet leaves, wet roads, green green green. I should’ve let it stretch._ _

__He’s outside the h/motel when I pull up, and my stomach and my heart reverse and do this fucked up little flipflop in my chest cavity at the sight of him. Nerves, attraction, I-don’t-know-what. I can see his smile from across the parking lot, watch him lope across the space between him and my car with that easy, long-legged stride of his. It belongs to a taller man. My heart is in my throat, bulging with affection._ _

__Door opens, door closes. He smells like the outside; like rain and all that green. “I’m late,” I say, and can’t get to the apology I should’ve attached to it in the first place out because Eugene is leaning over to kiss me, catching me unawares with my mouth all slack and open._ _

__“Hey,” he murmurs, and kisses me again. I respond on reflex, eyes closing as his hand comes to cup my jaw for a second before he pulls away. “How was your morning?”_ _

__And then he smiles at me, hair a little wild from the wet day outside, purple under his eyes from our late night. Like a heartbeat, that spark of attraction rises and falls inside me, burning so bright and vital I’m sure he can see it behind my eyes. I blink. “Not as good as it’d been if you stayed.” The words are out of my mouth before I can register even thinking them; it’s easy to turn to lightness when my chest feels all full up with smooth warm pebbles._ _

__He laughs, and settles back into his seat, pulling his seatbelt around himself. “Well, we’ll just have to try again tomorrow morning,” he mutters, something alive and playful in his eyes as he throws me a sidelong glance, mouth curling. “Right?”_ _

__The warmth settles in my chest, like a log crumbling into flames. I imagine the sparks it kicks up travelling through me, tingling right down to the tips of my fingers. His hand touches my knee; brief, intimate._ _

__“Feeling okay?”_ _

__And for the second time this morning I nod, breathe out slow through my nose, and say, “Good. Really good, Gene.”_ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!! and thank u to everyone who has left comments or kudos etc. so far... i've been having a weird few weeks, and i'm just super happy that people are enjoying this fic despite it being so NICHE lol u are all the best


	5. friday

It happens like this:

Early morning, lone-driving o’clock. Eugene had slept over the previous night, after a long drive back from Seattle in which he’d offered to make me dinner as thanks. Like I wasn’t being paid for it. But I said yes, of course, and he cooked for me, we showered together, we fell into bed. He stayed.

Now he has me on my belly, his big hands spreading my ass as he presses his tongue to my hole all dirty and deliberate. Filthy, with the noises he’s making. And I’m moaning, dick caught between the mattress and my belly, stomach swooping with the arousal this gives rise to inside me. Never pegged Eugene for this sort of thing. Once again, my first impressions being proved wrong. I can’t be mad about it. He tugs on my balls and I cum all whimpery and broken into the pillows because that shit is just too fucking hot, and isn’t it too early to be having sex as hot as this? Eugene moves while I’m still trying to catch my breath, face in the pillow and thighs all shivery as he nudges the head of his dick to my spit-wet ass and grinds against me. I moan, again. Think about the thick length of him inside me. A few breathless, pounding heartbeats later he’s cumming hot and wet against me, hand pressed to the centre of my back to keep himself upright.

We melt. My thoughts are a white static hum. Eugene’s nose at the nape of my neck, the warm bulk of him pressed against my back. Drowsily, I grin into the pillow. All covered in sweat and spit and cum. It’s gross but it’s just that good kinda gross which has me rolling my softening dick into the mattress just to feel it. Another little joy I can’t tell Jac about; she’s been getting concerned about the radio silence of the past two days, but I can’t bring myself to break the magic of mine and Eugene’s flirtation by holding it up for her to examine in the light.

“You smell good,” Eugene breathes, kissing my nape, my ear. I shiver pleasantly.

I retort, “You do,” and he kisses the top of my spine in response. 

We shower, once I can force myself up from underneath Eugene, who seems ready to settle back to sleep if it wasn’t for me urging him up and out. I soap up his hair and he soaps up mine, wiping suds from my eyes with gentle hands, rinsing my hair even more gently. I kiss him, and he tastes like water, like nothing else. His skin slippery under my touch. I leave him to towel off and dress himself, make breakfast and coffee while he’s at it and we eat together crammed at my little round table; rarely used. I have to clear a bunch of crap off it before we can even sit down; books and sheafs of paper, half a dozen empty cans of Pepsi, Red Bull. 

“You know, you weren’t kidding about bein’ messy,” he says, watching me with amusement on his face. I glance at him, trying to see if he’s making a jab at me, but his face is open, pleasant. I snort, and set his coffee in front of him.

“Surprised you remember that.”

He shrugs, tearing a slice of toast in two before reaching for the butter. “It weren’t that long ago.” He takes a bite, butter smearing on his top lip. “Feels like a while, but it weren’t.”

“It feels like forever ago,” I agree, sliding into the seat opposite him. Our knees bump under the table, the thing not really used to having more than just me at it. He’s sitting in Sheba’s seat. I think back to that morning I picked him up at the airport, my fucking ruined sweater and how badly I’d wished to be hungover just because it meant that I had been drunk. I swallow, and tap my pack of smokes to my palm before pulling one out, and lighting it. Eugene accepts the pack after me, and together we share the silence, front window open so the sounds of the world steadily waking up outside fill the room. 

Delicately, he blows smoke towards the open window, and murmurs, “Wanna play hooky?” 

I laugh. “What?”

He shrugs again, slow and languid. “I’ve got nothin’ planned for today. Show me some sights.”

I frown at him, and Eugene just tips his head back and exhales smoke, looking at me down his long nose. “I’ve got work,” I say.

“That’s where the ‘hooky’ part comes in.”

I consider it for a moment. Chris’d be pissed but not too pissed, so does it matter? I glance at Eugene, lit up in that watery blue dawn light, hair still dark and wet from our shower together. He’s got two days left here, I know. Wouldn’t it be nice to forget about our responsibilities for a little while? I’ve been good for so long.

“Sure,” I say, and just that makes me feel a little more like myself. “Fuck it, yeah, why not?” 

He grins at me, and I can’t hold back my smile. “Good, okay. Plan. I just need to change and we’ll be good to go.”

“Do you know what we’re doing?” I ask, watching him finish his toast, popping his thumb into his mouth to chase a fleck of butter. His eyebrows raise, playful.

“That’s on you.”

I leave him babytalking Sheba as I go and get dressed, head spinning with ideas of what we could do together. We were just in Seattle yesterday afternoon, but hadn’t done anything but go to his reading and go for a burger afterwards. Maybe the weather will hold to do something here, in Olympia? Or maybe we’ll just fly by the seat of our pants and do something spontaneous, as is my tradition. 

“I’ll give you a ride to the motel,” I say, when I emerge from the bedroom, pulling a sweater over my head. Eugene is sat next to Sheba on the sofa, tying the laces on his boots, and shoots me a smile as I wander closer. 

“Got a place figured out?” he asks, and I shrug.

“Maybe.” I run my fingers through his hair, still damp. “Maybe bring a jacket.”

He catches my wrist, kisses at my palm quick before releasing me. “You got it.”

I curl my fingers into my palm, the spot where he’d kissed me warm with the familiar intimacy of the gesture, and tuck my hand into my pocket. He surprises me, in moments like these. I wonder if it’s easy to learn how to be so affectionate, or whether it’s innate. I don’t know how to ask him. 

He goes ahead of me while I linger on the narrow porch, locking up first the front door and then fighting with the old, rusty lock of the screen door. I don’t know why I don’t just leave it, but I’m nothing if not paranoid, and —

The squeak of rubber on a wet surface, that familiar old groan of the steps. A thump, and curse. I glance over my shoulder, curious, to see Eugene sitting on his ass on the wet wooden stairs, cradling his hand close to his chest. His face is red. My heart jolts in my chest.

“Oh, shit.” I tear the key from the lock, and thump down past Eugene so I can kneel on the step below him, peer into his face. “Did you slip? Did you hit your head?”

I can see it now, the meeting with my boss. Concussing a client, Jesus, it’s a brand new low. Mix that up with why he was even in my apartment in the first place and I’m looking down a very short road that ends in the dismissal that I think I’ve been inching towards since I was hired. Then Eugene shakes his head, and I breathe out a sigh of relief, though his face is still tight and stiff with pain. Gently, I touch my fingers to the back of his hand.

“Lemme see,” I murmur, and his hand unfurls from his chest. “Caught yourself funny?”

“I think so,” he says, voice low, watching as I cradle his hand between mine. I press my thumbs down his fingers, his palm, eyes flicking between his face and his hand as I test the bones. When I reach his wrist he flinches, and that long flat line of his mouth flattens further.

“There?”

He nods. I heave a sigh.

“Alright,” I say, and stand. “C’mon, lets get some ice on you, it ain’t broken.” I can tell Eugene is embarrassed as he levers himself up with his one good hand. He doesn’t need to be, God knows I’ve fallen on my ass down these steps more than my fair share of times.

“How d’you know?” he asks, examining his hand as I curse and wrestle with the fucking screen door lock. Of all the times for it to decide it’s locked, now.

“I just do.”

I broke a few fingers falling down last winter. Not falling down the stairs to my apartment, for once, no. Just an innocuous little fall outside a bar in the next town over, drunk and playing stupid in the street with a couple guys I knew from there. Drinking buddies. Didn’t think much of it until I woke up the next morning, head pounding with my hangover and three of my fingers on my left hand purple and swollen. There’s a pain to a broken bone that’s unlike anything else; Eugene would know himself if he’d broken his wrist by that alone.

The screen door opens, Sheba slips out as I open the front door, and then Eugene groans as we step over the threshold. “I’m sorry,” he says, sitting down heavily on the arm of my sofa. “Didn’t even make it out to the car.”

I shrug my coat off and toss it over the kitchen counter, my car keys following it. “No sweat. You’ve just sprained it, we can head out once it’s bitin’ at you less.” I glance at him, at the two high blotches of red on his cheeks, the twist of his mouth, and I grin. “Gene, it’s fine.”

He flushes further. “I know. It just hurts.”

I wander close to look at it again, spread his big hand out in mine until he winces. Already the bruise is coming up, purpling his pale skin. “You bruise like a peach,” I murmur, turning his hand over. “I’ll get some arnica, it’ll bring it right out. Wrap it up and it’ll be good as new.”

I help him out of his coat, leave him on the sofa as I make a beeline for the bathroom and the medical kit stashed under the sink in there. “Help yourself to somethin’ frozen,” I call to him, an afterthought, as I settle myself on the edge of the tub and begin sifting through the organised chaos of my cookie-tin-turned-medicine-box. Band-aids, splints, painkillers. Some of Bill’s old Xanax rattle around at the bottom. It’s an old force of habit to keep myself stocked. I push papery packets of alcohol wipes aside, and uncover the greasy little metal tube of arnica at the bottom. From the other room, I hear the freezer open, and pay it no mind. 

The medical kit finds its home under the sink again, and I cross back through to the living room, eyes on the tube as I say, “It’s a little old but I don’t think shit like this goes off anyway —”

And I stop.

The freezer fan is whirring. I stare at the scene in front of me, an ugly parody of what so many fragments of my days and nights have looked like recently. Eugene’s good hand gripped around the plastic handle of the door, which is obscuring his face and shoulders from my view in the doorway of the room, but I recognise the body language. I recognise the tight clutch of his hand around that handle. Rapt. 

The dissonance of seeing it is crazy; like I’m watching myself through another’s eyes. I clear my throat just to remind him of my presence and the freezer door snaps shut faster than I could ever close it. 

“I —” 

I watch the words get stuck in his throat. My heart is pounding under my breastbone. It feels like someone has opened me up and looked right at me, right at the ugly little core of me. I feel naked and vulnerable and just teetering on the verge of anger-as-a-deflection. Easier to throw him out than to explain, right? I take a deep breath, but Eugene beats me to it.

“Why is there vodka in there?” he asks, expression blankly confused. I’m frozen to the spot, rictus in the doorway. Jesus Christ, I think I’d feel less vulnerable than if he was charting the scars on me. Anything but this. No one was ever meant to see that vodka.

For a completely insane moment I really consider denying it. I don’t get past the initial urge — there’s no way that thing isn’t anything other than mine, and what’s the point in lying anyway? I’m an adult. I can make whatever shitty decisions I want. 

“I thought you quit,” Eugene says, because I guess I’ve been silent for too long. I swallow.

“It’s complicated.” Ha. What a fucking understatement. 

Eugene’s brow furrows. “Well,” he says, expression inching closer and closer towards true bewilderment. “Is it?” He looks sweet stood there, which makes it worse. Hair all clean and fluffy from our shower, one of his sleeves half rucked up to bare his purpling wrist to the room. Something about it makes me tense, gets my back up; he’s stood here all handsome in my apartment with the knowledge of the vodka a part of him too, now. I can’t stand it. I can’t be that person to him.

“I haven’t opened it,” I snap, quickly. Wounded, cornered. A coyote with his leg in a trap has got nothing on me right now. “So what’s the problem?”

Then Eugene’s head rears back, and his brows dip lower. Mentally, I’m already drafting the email to my boss shifting the last two days of Eugene’s trip onto someone else. “Hey,” he says, low, hand outstretched like I’m a fucking animal. “I ain’t tellin’ you off. This is just,” I watch him search for the words, my hands balled into sweaty chunks of ice by my sides. “Worrying!”

“Ain’t your place to worry,” I snap.

“What?” The word seems to be pulled up out of him; he blinks at me, eyes big in his face. I almost laugh, but that’s the nerves. “You’re being ridiculous, Merriell —”

Warningly, I say, “Hey —” 

He barrels over me. “You can’t just tell people whether they can or can’t worry about you.”

Belatedly, I realise that we’re yelling. It’s not pleasant. But my hackles are up and Eugene is looking at me like I invented being stupid and it’s making me feel angry and sad and embarrassed and I don’t wanna be any of those things, but I am. I will my shoulders to relax. Count back from ten just like Jac always tells me to do. _Ten, nine, eight_ — Eugene’s hand trembles, just slightly. _Seven, six, five…_

“I’m telling you,” I murmur, eyes on the ground. “It’s fine. Now lemme see your hand.” The arnica is still clutched crumpled and greasy in my hand, the metal tube warmed from the heat of my body. I unclench my fist, some fragile little peace offering, but Eugene is still looking at me like I’m crazy. Stubborn as a goddamn fucking _mule_.

“So you can worry about me?”

I roll my eyes. We’re fighting like a fucking couple, and something about that is getting me all heated again. The illusion of familiarity, the weird intimacy of it. 

“You know,” I say, and as the words queue themselves up to leave my mouth, I regret it. But I’ve started something now and I can’t back out — I know Eugene wouldn’t let me even if I tried, even if I hung my head and told him to forget it. So I carry on. “We barely know each other. You do know that, right?”

Mingled relief and regret, as Eugene’s face drops at my words. Finally. I don’t have to worry about fucking things up anymore. It’s done. The freezer hums into the silence that drops between us. 

“So what?” he murmurs, but none of that irritated heat is in his voice anymore. He looks hurt. Arms crossed over his chest. “I like you. Isn’t that enough?”

I say nothing. My face feels stony, mask-like. Any twitch of my expression could give me away, and I will myself to hold still. _Ten, nine, eight, seven —_

His face twists at my silence. “Or do you just think I get into bed with just anyone?”

“I don’t know,” I bite out. I just can’t stop thinking about seeing him in my place, that white-knuckled grip on the freezer handle. “I don’t know you.” It’s like testing the soft gum of a freshly lost tooth; poking at it and poking at it to see if it’ll bleed. I want to be alone. I don’t want him to look at me like that anymore. I want to wrap up his hurt wrist and I want to turn back time and make it to the car safely, want to go do whatever stupid shit I was beginning to come up with as I was locking the door. Want to forget about this whole goddamn thing and go back to pretending I’m normal. 

I don’t know if Eugene sees something change in my face, but he frowns, and takes a step forwards me. I will myself not to take a step back. “What are you doing right now?” he asks, and his voice is curious, cautious, confused. Jesus Christ, he’s a better man than me. If someone spoke to me like I spoke to him, I’d have been gone ten minutes ago. “Why are you being like this?”

“None of your business.” I’m wavering. I think he can tell. The anger’s all bled outta me, and now I’m left with all the hurt and the shame and nothing to carry it. I stare at the floor, stare at the wine stain on the rug. 

There’s a long beat of silence, and then Eugene clears his throat, and he steps closer to me again. Inching closer to me like the wounded animal I am.

“You don’t have to do something like this on your own. Nobody could.”

_I could,_ I think, eyes on the scuffed toes of his boots. “I prefer it.” My voice comes out rough. All I can think is that Jac is gonna have a time with this next week.

Gently, so gently it makes me just wanna shrivel up and die, Eugene murmurs, “Do you really believe that?”

_Clickclickclick_. That’s a Jac question. I don’t know how to answer it. Because, yes, of course I believe it. Would it be coming outta my mouth if I didn’t? I’ve never understood AA, never understood everyone sitting in a circle, jerking each other’s dicks, and calling it progress. I don’t like the sincerity of it, it makes my fucking skin crawl. I hate talking to people like me, hate the smug superiority of the veteran sober, hate how they make it out to be so easy when it’s everything but that. But then I think of Bill quietly making me a sandwich he knew I was too doped up and too nauseous to eat, but cutting the crusts off it and setting it down in front of me anyway. I think of the flowers my sister put in her guest room when I came to stay the third time, like she was happy to have me, like it was something to celebrate. I think of every single time Burgie had firmly and gently told me to fuck off and take myself elsewhere, I think of the time he picked me up at three a.m because I was wasted in a part of town I didn’t know, and his was the only number I had memorised. 

Weakly, I say, “I don’t know.”

The argument has fizzled; that’s tangible. A warm, weird weight in the room. I feel like a raw nerve, so much so that even Eugene’s eyes on me hurt. And I can’t look up from the floor, from the stain on the rug, because I think I’ll actually cry if I do. I can feel it in my nose, in the space behind my eyes; that tight, burning feeling. I count backwards from ten. Eugene doesn’t speak.

Finally, I find my voice, and croak, “Please. Before it gets too swollen.” The plastic wrapper on the rolled bandage in my hand crinkles as I clench my fist around it. “Then you can stress over whatever you want.” Palms clammy. This kind of scrutiny is the true unknown; I’ve never had a guy not back down on me. I don’t know what to do with him standing there silent with all the knowledge of me that matters in his head. I wish I could get it out. I wish he had just made it easy and left. 

We sit, close together on my sofa. Knees touching. I can tell he’s sorry; it’s there in the dip of his head so that he doesn’t catch my eye, the downturned corners of his mouth. The gentle way he sits down next to me, like any sudden movement could send me bolting. He’s not wrong. My hands shake as I pull at the little plastic sheath the rolled bandage is encased in, and he watches me in silence, his own hand lying stiff and purple with hurt in his lap. Then the smell of arnica in my nose; pungent, and it feels so intimate to be massaging it into his wrist after everything I’d just said to him that I’m nervous. Shy with my touches. I feel looked at, hyperaware of every inch of me, hyperaware of all the nicks and the burns on my arms in a way I’ve never been before with Eugene. I know he must be seeing me in a brand new light. The thought is bitter on my tongue.

I don’t know what to say to break the silence. I know Eugene doesn’t either; lips thin, eyes big and dark and darting everywhere but on me. I tuck the tail of the bandage back in on itself, and wonder if he really meant it when he said he cares for me. 

“I just like to have it,” I offer, because I feel like he’s earned it. He stayed. “It makes me feel —” I don’t finish the thought, instead I run my finger over the edge of the wrapping on his wrist, and say, “I’m sorry.” I don’t know what I’m apologising for. _I’m sorry you had to see me like that_ , is more accurate, maybe. 

“I ain’t the one you have to apologise to,” he says, and folds his hand back into himself, holding it close to his belly. Our knees still touch. 

Now that my task is done, the shame is back again. Did it ever leave? My idle hands. I clasp them together, and then grip my knees. Mirror him, tuck them close to my body. My phone buzzes audibly in my jacket pocket; abandoned to the kitchen counter. Eugene sighs.

“I don’t really have much experience with this,” he admits. I cut my eyes away, turn them on the slate-grey sky beyond the window. 

“Most people don’t.” I watch a bird wheel through the sky, like a fish through water. I can feel the throb of the freezer right there in the core of me. “I never thought I would.”

That’s not strictly true. I think I’ve always been awake to the potential for it in me, since before I ever took my first drink. Before I even had the language for it. Thirteen and drinking beer with my father until I vomited, right there on the wide wraparound porch of my parents’ house. Fingers gripped sweaty but pleasantly numb around the railings, splintery old wood and flaking scaling paint. Vomit, in my nose. My father’s stupid, braying laughter. I remember distinctly the song playing over the radio, the warm, happy feeling of being drunk with him. Of bonding with him. 

When I say it’s genetic that’s too simplistic, because it’s easier to blame it on genes, or on him. Because confronting the fact that it’s all me is something I can’t face head on; I have to look at it out the corner of my eye, like if I make eye contact either it or I will flee. I made myself like this. In the very same way a person like Eugene or Burgie or even Bill managed to make themselves different. And I’m keeping myself like this, too. But why I’m doing that I just don’t know yet. Another thing for Jac to divine from the guts of me. 

“I guess no-one does,” Eugene says, then, and I’m so lost in my thoughts that I miss the beat, and he prompts, “Thinks they’ll end up with —” He shrugs. He can’t say it out loud. Prize-winning author with all the words in the world under his belt and he can’t say _addiction_. I don’t know how to respond. Don’t even know how to begin to explain that this was all predetermined for me before I was anything at all. 

My phone is ringing in my pocket, now. No more texts. Eugene glances at me; I spot it out of the corner of my eye.

“You wanna get that?”

I shake my head, and drag my eyes away from the window. Birds silhouetted against that grey sky, strung together like toys on the power-lines. “It’s my sister,” I mutter.

“So?”

“So I don’t wanna talk to her.”

Eugene opens his mouth, as though he’s about to argue, but then Sheba starts tearing up the bottom of the front door and I’m spared from it. He watches me cross to the door; I can feel his eyes boring hot little holes into the back of my neck. I can’t give him the satisfaction of letting the stony mask that I guess is my face now slip. I can feel it; tight and expressionless, something not my own. I’m rattled. My skin feels like it’s been made from rubber.

Sheba slips past my ankles, making a beeline for him. _Traitor_ , I think, meanly. 

“We don’t have to talk about it at all,” Eugene says, as Sheba winds herself between his ankles. He’s petting her awkwardly with his good hand. “I mean it.”

I cross my arms over my chest and take up my spot against the kitchen counter. Vodka to my left. It almost feels like we’re ganging up on him. “I feel like there’s a ‘but’ coming up soon.”

I can tell he’s really feeling some kinda serious way about this because he doesn’t even pretend to be amused by that. Just acts like I didn’t speak, glances down at the cat and says, “But it worries me that you think it all lies at your door.” Then his eyes flick up, fast enough that I don’t anticipate it and don’t have time to glance away. He meets my eye. Heat is climbing steadily up my neck, my jaw. “That’s a crazy kinda pressure, Merriell.”

I close my eyes at the curve of his accent around my name. Soft as a kiss. As intimate as if he’d touched my bare skin. “I see a therapist once a week. She gets me talkin’ on all kinds of stuff.”

“And that’s enough?”

I breathe out slow through my nostrils. I want a cigarette so bad I can feel the need physical in my chest. “It’s enough for now.”

I keep replaying his question around in my head. I know the horrible little ear-worm of it will haunt me all through the night. The Jac question. _Do you really believe that?_ My mom used to tell me what nobody’s an island. Don’t know why I’m out here on some grey little peninsula acting like some goddamned green untouched land. It’s not how she taught me, but she’s dead and so’s my daddy so I guess I don’t have to listen to anybody anymore. Just me and my addict-voice that lives all cosy up in my stupid head. Sheba. BurgieBillJac — Eugene. The list keeps growing. Citizens of SNAFU-island. Jesus, what a place that’d be. 

We need to escape my apartment. We’re just gonna sit here and and go round and round in fucking circles if we don’t. I snatch my coat from the counter.

“Gene,” I say, and try and sound firm. My knees still feel like jelly, my chest a weird nervous cavern. “Eugene, we’re goin’ for a drive —”

He opens his mouth. “I —”

“We’re goin’ for a drive, and then we’re gonna get out and we’re gonna go for a long walk. And maybe if you can keep from lookin’ at me like I’m about to off myself we can talk once I ain’t feelin’ so, “ I shrug, and search for the word. It doesn’t surface, so I make do: “Feelin’ so much like I just caught you with your eyes on my vodka, okay?”

He’s looking at me like he can’t quite make out what my angle is, but I can pinpoint the moment when the gears turn. His eyes soften, and then his face softens with it. “Fine,” he mutters, and he’s not pleased in the slightest but he’s standing up, brushing the cat hair off his knees with one hand, so I know he can’t be too mad. “Fine,” he says again, and I don’t miss the awkward moment of hesitation that stilts the eventual kiss he presses to my temple. I close my eyes. “But I’m gonna hold you to it.”

“You ain’t got the sway over me for that,” I lie. My heart is banging under my ribcage. _Do you really believe that?_ I’ve been doing everything on my own since I even knew I didn’t have to.

Eugene navigates the steps properly this time, and I pop the cigarette lighter down before I buckle my seatbelt, that nagging need for a cigarette still tugging in my throat. Our breaths fog in the cold interior of the car; I dial the heater up to ten and we sit for a moment, shivering.

Eugene sneezes. The cigarette lighter pops up, glowing. 

I drive to Watershed Park, because I’m operating mostly on muscle memory for right now and it’s a familiar haunt of mine in the summer months. Me and Burgie; we’d go smoke a little weed and wander around, get lost for a couple hours. Cool our feet in a stream, talk about nothing. Bill swears he saw a cougar there three years ago but I never saw the thing, so I think it’s a lie. I think about that cougar now, hands stuffed in my pockets and face cold above the zipped up collar of my jacket. Tramping along beside Eugene, who looks just as lost in thought as I know I must. Pale face, those long, easy strides that don’t belong to him. The air is rich with the smell of rotting wood, with moss, that green wet smell of a forest after rain. Somewhere, a stream runs parallel to us. I can hear it, can hear the water breaking over stones, can hear the soft velvet rush of it. 

“What’d you do if you saw a cougar?” I ask, voice too-loud in the quiet green world around us. Our boots thump on the wet wooden boardwalk that snakes through the forest, an easy, satisfying rhythm. There’s a beat of silence, and for a minute I worry Eugene’s not gonna humour me, but then he hums. When I glance to my side he has a thoughtful, considering expression on his face, and my chest warms a little, a guttering flame. 

“Figure you can’t run from ‘em,” he says, slowly. I shake my head. “Ain’t nothin’ to do but stand still and shit yourself, huh?”

“Sounds about right,” I murmur, and he laughs. The sound rings out through the woods, bouncing off all the soft sodden wood and squat mossy stones. The guttering flame in my chest flares, and then shrinks comfortably. I sigh. “Eugene, I don’t apologise much.” 

His presence next to me changes; becomes alert and listening. I bow my head and watch my boots on the boardwalk, scraping over patches of loose chickenwire. 

“I didn’t mean what I said, I was just,” I struggle lamely for the word. “Panicking. Wanted you gone.”

It feels easier, like this. To talk. Feels like sitting in the car with him again, our natural state. Both of us looking right ahead into that tunnel of trees and letting the words run outta our mouths. Eye contact is overrated. I need this; side-of-the-head-view, speaking into open air and not seeing my words bounce off anything, not seeing my words settle into the skin of his face. It was too hard to do this at home, not in my tiny fucking apartment with Eugene looking hurt and defiant a few feet away. Out here without his eyes on me I feel like a belt has loosened from around my chest. I take a deep lungful of cold, fresh air.

“Most people would’ve gone,” I say. Eugene makes no move to reply. I swallow, and gather whatever specks of courage are still left to me. “Thank you for not leavin’, I guess I’m tryna say.” 

We thump along in silence for a little while longer. I’m warming up now, between my thick sweater and my coat zipped up to my mouth. I free my hands from my pockets, let them cool by my sides. A bird bursts from a beneath the boardwalk as we approach it, a little blood-red bullet which settles its ass down right there in front of us for a second. Then it spots us, and the sudden realisation of fear in its stupid little black beads of eyes is tangible, and despite myself I laugh. It escapes. A glance to the side finds Eugene looking at me sidelong, a smile curving his eyes above the scarf he has pulled up underneath his nose. 

“Cardinal,” he mutters, fondness in his expression. “Used to have one that lived in my Granma’s back garden, always flying at his own reflection. They’re dumb birds.”

I snort, skirting a particularly torn up and curling patch of chickenwire. It sends me bumping into him, shoulders together, before we separate. “I think Sheba would disagree. She’s never met a bird she could outsmart.”

“I think that might be a her problem,” Eugene replies, and I bump my arm to his again, just for the closeness. He glances down at the ground, face ducked into the folds of his scarf so I can’t see much of his expression; just the scrunch of his brow.

“What would you have done if I left?” he asks, and I move so our arms are no longer brushing. 

“I don’t know.”

I do know. I think we both know. _Say what you mean,_ I think, a niggling little reminder of the very first time we met. 

To my surprise, he does. Like he read my mind or something. “I can tell you don’t wanna be babied or anything, Merriell. But sometimes you have to accept the concern people have for you.” Just dropped into the silence between us like it’s nothing, like he hasn’t dug right down into the core of me.

For a moment, I’m struck completely dumb. Speechless, staring at the side of his face because I’ve forgotten about the delicate space that looking ahead always gives us. He glances at me, careful brown eyes, and I blurt, “I don’t like being told what to do.”

We’re both walking so slow now that we’re practically at a standstill. The trees whisper on either side, a curious audience to this difficult talk. Then Eugene says, “I’m not telling you what to do.” He nudges his shoulder to mine, companionable. I feel like I’m half a step behind this mood shift, floundering in the shallows. “It ain’t my place to tell you what to do with yourself, I just —” he pauses, and shrugs. I watch his expression intently. “Sometimes it’s nice to take the load off and not have to think.”

I think Jac has planted him. He’s a mole, a fucking mole in my life set to get under my skin and then under the skin beneath that. How else could he be parroting Jac-isms, like he’d swallowed the little pad of paper she’s always scribbling in, and was now regurgitating her words back to me? 

“I’m completely capable of making good decisions,” I say, icily.

“I’m not tellin’ you that you ain’t,” he reminds me. Then, gently, gently, so gentle that the anger that follows makes me feel bad, he says, “But Merriell, you have vodka in —”

I round on him, embarrassment morphing almost instantaneously into hot anger. “And I haven’t drank it,” I snap. “So that’s a good decision.” _It’s not your place_ is rising up in my throat; I only barely bite back on it. Again, that feeling from the apartment, cornered-dog-rageshame. I dig in my pockets for my cigarettes, avoiding Eugene’s eye. He’s quiet to my side, I’ve bitten his head off right to the shoulders. 

I know I’m resistant. I know I’m _resisting_. That’s my cross to bear, not Burgie’s, not Jac’s, and certainly not Eugene’s. I accept the concern, whatever, but it doesn’t mean I need to let the people in my life decide what’s right and what’s wrong for me. All the time I feel watched. The scrutiny is unbearable. Eugene is never gonna look at me and not wonder if I’m keeping liquor somewhere secret ever again. 

Belatedly, I realise we’re going round and round in circles just like we were in the apartment, only now we’ve got the whole forest to hear me being avoidant. I sigh, and then offer Eugene a cigarette. A silent gesture of goodwill. He takes it, and lets me light it for him, and a few metres later we fetch up against a bench set into the softening wood of the boardwalk. We sit.

“How’s your wrist?” I ask, ashing between my knees. Eugene shrugs, holding his cigarette awkwardly in his left hand.

“Wish I’d taken a painkiller before we left.” 

I grimace at the wall of trees, at the green world just out of reach. I can see the stream now; slick black rocks and ice-cold clear water. “Sorry,” I say. And then again, “I’m sorry.”

I hope he knows it’s for more than forgetting to grab him some Tylenol. His hand settles over mine, and I curl my fingers around his own reflexively, thumb skirting the rough edge of the bandage wrapped around his palm. 

“When you’re ready to let go of it, you’ll see just how much it’s holding you back.”

I know he’s not just talking about the vodka. I want to stay silent, give his words time to take root and begin to grow in me, but I can’t help myself. There on a wet bench in the middle of the forest, his cold hand in my warm hand, I ask, “And how do you know so much?” 

I look at his profile, look at his long nose and his kind eyes and his pale lashes, all those little parts of him I like. He smiles, and cocks his head to look at me, expression playful and out of place in this conversation. “I guess I don’t know a thing,” he says, and takes a drag from his cigarette. I think about the very first time he made me laugh, that stupid story about his agent and emphysema. “But writers are liars,” he adds, “We can make anything up.”

“Ain’t that just empathy?”

“I think lying’s more accurate.” Then he leans in close to press his cold nose to my temple, kisses at my cheek. “Please don’t try and do this alone,” he whispers, and pats my cheek, his cigarette dangerously close to the curl of my hair. “A problem shared is a problem halved, huh?”

I snort at that, and drop my eyes to my knees, to my forgotten cigarette burning down between my fingers. “Nobody wants even a tiny bit of this,” I mutter, taking a drag from it. “Let alone half.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Eugene murmurs, and squeezes my fingers with his own. My heart constricts with it.

A cold wind stirs my hair, catches the ends of Eugene’s scarf. He burrows into it further, and I wish I could go with him. Tuck myself up in that body-warmed little space that I know must smell like him. The thought has me leaning closer, our hands still clutched together in my lap, my head finding his shoulder, nose pressing into his scarf. Cologne, the musk smell of his skin. I wonder if he knows I’m not normally like this, that I prefer my men at arm’s length or not at all. I guess not. He only knows the me-of-one-week-ago. The thought is oddly freeing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!! lemme know what you thought :~)


	6. saturday

I sleep like a rock the night after Eugene looked into my freezer.

Heavier than a rock, heavier than anything I even know. A ten ton truck, a mountain, anti-matter. Something so blackly and blissfully dense that I can’t even dream. No night-terrors, no sleep paralysis, no shadows in the corner of my room. Just me, Sheba on my chest, and then nothing. Hours of fantastic nothingness. So much nothing that it’s almost something. 

When I wake it’s to sunlight falling in ribbons across my bed, thrown through the half-closed blinds and lighting up all the dust motes gold. And even after all that nothingness I don’t wake groggy, like I used to after a twelve-hour deaddrunk sleep after a too-many-hours-to-count bender. I wake to sunlight on my face and my phone alarm buzzing underneath my pillow and I don’t even feel like shit.

It’s a fluke, I’m sure. But I don’t know if I even care. 

I float through my morning; boiling hot shower followed by a shave, my first in days. I meet my eyes in the steamed-up mirror and don’t feel much of anything, which is such a complete improvement from quiet distaste that it almost feels good. I pinch and pull at my skin, tell myself I look better sober, and then stand with a cup of coffee watching Sheba eat noisily on her little mat by the door. 

“Did you sleep good?” I ask her. Her tail flicks, and I nod, cross over to the table to snatch up my cigarettes from where I’d abandoned them last night. “Same here.” I crack the window open and settle into one of the chairs, breathing in the smell of a cold, but bright, morning. Then cigarette smoke replaces that clean, fresh scent, and I relax back into my seat as the nicotine unwinds me fully. 

Something niggles in my head. That sore, poked-at empty tooth socket. _Someone who isn’t you knows your secret_ , that unhelpful little voice in my head supplies. When I move to go brush my teeth a handful of minutes later, I meet myself in the mirror and again the voice nudges at me. _Someone who isn’t you knows —_

Car keys. Wallet. Smokes. Double back to leave clean water for Sheba. Double back to bang on the bar window to startle Burgie. Car keys? I swear — yeah, inside jacket pocket. I move on autopilot, settling myself into the drivers’ seat and starting the car before I can really even process the urge to be alone. There’s no alone-time more complete than car-alone-time. I switch the radio off, just let it be me and the sound of the tires on the road. Not wet today, for once. Just bright and crisp and absolutely fucking freezing — I blast the heating until my face feels dry from it. Canned coffee from the gas station I stopped in, cold between my thighs. Reminds me of the beers I used to drive around with. Reminds me of the Jim Beam in my dad’s truck. 

Someone who isn’t me knows. 

I guess I don’t know how to feel about it. I wouldn’t be driving aimlessly wasting gas and killing the environment if I did, would I? It’s not even something I can bring up to Jac in a few days, because not even she knows about the vodka. So it’s left to me to figure out, which isn’t a good position to be in since I obviously can’t figure out shit. I think of what Eugene said yesterday as I roll to a stop at a red light; _when you’re ready to let go of it, you’ll see_. That’s the problem, right? I don’t have the perspective. So here I am driving ‘round and ‘round just to realise that I don’t know what to do or what to feel about no longer being the only holder of the freezer secret. 

I wonder if Eugene knows how to feel about it. I wonder if it’s worse if he does or if he doesn’t.

He hadn’t slept over, if that isn’t obvious. We’d parted ways after our wander through Watershed yesterday afternoon; me to my apartment, Eugene to his h/motel. And we’d texted, briefly. Nothing said about the whole vodka thing and then our following chat in the park except that everything we said was about it, in some way. That vein of doublespeak running through our words. I’d say _still on for tomorrow?_ to which I’d obviously mean _do you still have any interest in me after seeing a different version of me_? To which he’d reply, _of course, if that’s still good with you?_ , which of course means, _can you stand to see me? Because I feel like something shifted tangibly yesterday and I can’t tell whether it was for good or for bad._ Or something like that.

It’s confusing, I know. Gas station coffee gets me thoughts-racy, over-caffeinated, overstimulated. I’m gripping the steering wheel like I could snap it in two like the Hulk any second. I keep thinking about my head resting on his shoulder, his hurt hand tucked against himself and the other gripping my own. Cold, pink-red-cold the way white people’s hands go. He’d kissed me before he’d gotten out of the car, and that had felt real. Jac tells me to trust in the things I can feel, the things I can touch, and try to give in less to my paranoia. Easier said than done. But the kiss had been nice, the kiss had settled me even if the imagined text doublespeak didn’t.

I fumble a fresh cigarette from the pack with one hand. Pop the cigarette lighter down and try not to think even a single thought until it pops back up again, glowing. Count it down like I try to count my anger back into me; _twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven_ —

My phone chimes. I light my cigarette. The sound of the road is over me, around me, under me. The brightness I had woken with still hasn’t left me; I still feel alert, I still feel rested. I try to focus on that, try to pick up again the habit of little joys that I’ve fallen off the wagon from keeping track of. Little joy: Eugene doesn’t hate me. (I think). Little joy: I slept well. (But won’t tonight). Little joy: Despite my spiralling thoughts, I feel pretty good. (You see where this is going). 

Hard to create something good. Harder still to keep something good from morphing into something bad.

I check my phone at a red light. Text from my sister: _merriell stop being childish_. No chance. Toss my phone back onto the passenger seat and then drive for long enough that I stop thinking in huge neurotic leaps. 

Last night, after I’d sat and imagined drinking the vodka in my freezer for a while, I picked Eugene’s book back up again. And for some reason, I devoured it. Finally got into it like I haven’t been able to so far, even that night where I started it sat half-sleeping in my armchair. Captured by the story at last. Friday night, and the bar below noisy through the floorboards, me upstairs in bed by ten, nose in a book like it held the secrets to the universe. Who would’ve guessed it? Certainly not me. 

I don’t think it was even the story, though that turned out damn good for a crime novel. It’s just — you can see Eugene’s hand in every little piece of it. That sounds obvious, sounds common, but it’s not. Sometimes you read a book and know it could’ve been churned out by anybody; got no mark of the author in it because they don’t have a voice strong enough to leave one. But Eugene’s book was rich with him. Packed to the rafters with him. That measured way that he speaks, in which he thinks. The loving way he describes Louisiana, the bayou, like an old friend he’s glad to see. Green and growing and dangerous, heartbeat of America, the start of all things. Root of the Mississippi, mother to all rivers. Made me ache for home, got me missing a place I’ve only seen while sick as a dog detoxing, which is no mean feat. 

Part of me can’t wait to see him just so I can tell him I finally finished the book. Part of me is so nervous to come back face to face with him in the same room as the vodka that I feel a little sick with it. I wonder if he’ll check, wonder what he’ll feel when he sees I haven’t poured it away like I bet he expected me to…but I’m getting ahead of myself. First I have a day of work, and a brief recess from that for my boss to give me shit about missing work yesterday with no word to him about it. 

And then. Final night with Eugene. My heart wants to slide up into my throat every time I think about it. I don’t know how to feel about it yet, because there’s so many other things to feel a certain way about and I’ve never been much of an emotional multitasker. 

I smoke another cigarette and decide on texting Jac. _Little joy: sleeping with the client_ , I fire off, more a cry for help than anything else, and then sit in the parking lot outside Codex smoking a cigarette and fielding her array of disapproving messages. 

_Again?_ she says. And then, _dude, I don’t think this is a joy._

_Maybe not for you_ , I tap out, and her following silence speaks a thousand words. I shove my phone into my back pocket and unfold myself from the car, back stiff from driving around for the better part of an hour in it. And still none the wiser. 

I think how I feel about it being mine and Eugene’s last night together is so mixed up in how I feel about Eugene being Second Holder of The Freezer Secret that it’s really hard to pull the two apart. Can’t unthread one from another, can’t work out how I feel about one individually so I’m being forced to feel about both at the same time.

It’s trepidation, I think. I nudge the mini fridge in the glass-walled break room closed with my foot, Red Bull cold in my hand. That or something like it. Even though we’d split ways yesterday with no weirdness between us, I still worry. I never wanted to be this person to him, and now that I am I’m not sure where to go next.

Bill waves at me, beckons me closer, and I crack the lid of my Red Bull before I go, squaring my shoulders against the day.

—————

I pick Eugene up after work; beg off hanging out with Bill by pretending I’m coming down with something. The whole drive over to the h/motel I make up little scenarios in my head; good and bad, realistic and then the more ridiculous. I imagine Eugene not getting into the car, I imagine him coming into my apartment and making a beeline for the freezer. I imagine him pouring my vodka down the drain and I imagine him finally getting to see me for who I really am as I try to wrestle it away from him.

The traffic light flicks red; I step hard on the breaks so I don’t run it, then flash the bird to the driver behind me who leans on his horn in retaliation. Head in the goddamn clouds. My heart is thumping at the mere thought of all that cheap vodka down the drain.

He’s not outside waiting on me, which is new, so I pull up outside the motel and text him. Push the cigarette lighter down. Switch radio stations for a while as I try and find something suitable to cover up any silences that could drop between us on this drive. Back at the flat I’ve got the heating on and a few chicken thighs marinating in the fridge, got a bottle of red that Burgie had relinquished unhappily to me for Eugene, got a strip of condoms in my bathroom cupboard that I’m not sure we’ll get around to using. 

Why hasn’t he come out yet?

The engine idling loud under me. The cigarette lighter pops up and I touch it to the end of my smoke, and then hover it close enough to the back of my hand to feel the heat of it. A whisper of movement catches my eye, and the lighter finds its home back in its slot as Eugene approaches the car, dragging that fucking suitcase with the busted wheel behind him. I lean across to get the passenger side door for him.

“What d’you got that for?”

Eugene stops, wide-eyed and guileless with his hand on the handle of the case. “Figured I was stayin’ over?” 

I stare, and then realise. The airport, his morning flight, fuck. “Shit,” I say, and gesture at him to put it in the trunk. He goes, and I pop the trunk, throw a, “I’m sorry, I forgot!” out the window to him. I see his hand wave me off.

“Thought you were gonna send me beggin’ back to the front desk to check back in then,” Eugene continues, as he settles himself into the passenger seat. “Like maybe you’d change your mind.” His voice is careful. He smells clean and bright, that scent I will probably always associate with him just as soon as I manage to track it down.

I snort, and put the car in reverse, eyes on the rearview as I reply, “Thought you might change yours.”

“About what?” he asks, puzzlement in his voice, and I shrug, indicator ticking into the quiet car as the radio greys out into static. “Oh, Merriell,” he murmurs. His hand touches my knee. “Forget about yesterday. Let’s have a nice night.”

I glance at him, the engine idling, indicator blinking, road clear for me to pull out. I linger. “Do you mean that?” 

“Of course I do.” His lashes dip; pale and pretty in the low afternoon light. I wonder what he’s been doing with his day, wonder if he’s been writing. What would I do, if I found out that he wrote about me, in that careful and measured way he has? Is that conceited to wonder about? My hands flex on the steering wheel; a passing car honks its own briefly at me, frozen and indicating to turn. The sounds jerks me out of my reverie, and I turn back to the road, away from Eugene’s face.

“Okay,” I say, and the radio sputters, a snatch of song that blooms into full audio as I ease out into the road. “Alright, let’s have a nice night.”

————

There’s a tangible initial shyness to the both of us, once we transfer from that safe forward-facing relationship in the car to the space where it had all happened, just over a day ago. I can feel it in myself; just some edgy awkward weirdness that always reminds me of high school. Don’t know what to do with my hands. Don’t know where to put my eyes. 

Eugene is barely faring better; he’s standing in the middle of the room with his coat on, shoulders up around his ears. I guess it’s a weird situation for both of us. There’s only one way to shatter it. 

“Vodka’s in the freezer,” I joke, and watch with a strange kind of relish the way that Eugene shrinks back into himself in uncertainty. Sometimes it’s easiest to hang a lampshade on something and call it a goddamn day. “Or wine, if that’s more your speed.” I add, grin on my face like I’m not dying inside to draw the topic up to face the light again.

His eyes dart. “Are you joking?” he asks, softly, and my smile widens. His brows dip. “Merriell, that’s not funny.” But there’s a ghost of something to the set of his mouth; something wary and held-back in his dark brown eyes. 

“It’s a little funny,” I prompt, and the anxiety in my chest eases a little as he huffs a laugh and glances away. “C’mon, ain’t it?”

“You’re somethin’ else,” he mutters, but he’s rolling his eyes and smiling a little when he turns back to me. I shrug, rock back on my heels, and then Eugene sighs, and adds, “Wine, please.”

His coat finds its home hung up next to mine, his boots pushed close to the front door. When Sheba rattles at the door it’s him who goes to open it, letting her snake past his ankles without a second glance at him. I realise I’m still smiling; a real one this time. Something warily warm and pleased in my chest to replace that anxiety. I hand him a glass of wine, and he takes it, and I do my very best at looking as casual as possible as I slip the wine saver into the bottle and step away from it. I know he’s watching me. I can feel his eyes on me.

“Excited to head back?” I ask, laying the chicken into the hot pan as he takes himself and his wine over to the sofa. 

“Sure,” he replies, sitting down and patting at his knee to try and convince Sheba to come up. She sits at his feet, staring at him, twisting her head side to side. “Hey, this cat really doesn’t play along, huh?” 

“Never.”

He gives up, draws his legs up under him to settle crosslegged into the cushions. Still, that smile on my face. It’s nice to see him making himself comfortable. I try and compare it to the first time he was here, but realise he’d seemed pretty comfortable then too. Maybe Eugene is just a guy who feels alright in whatever space he’s in. Maybe it’s just my apartment, but God knows why that’d be.

I flip the chicken. He drinks his wine. The freezer buzzes along into the silence until he stands and takes himself and his wine over to my record player, my haphazard stack of records.

“You know,” he says, as I wish I could be so careless around a glass of wine as he is. “You don’t strike me as a guy who collects records.”

I snort. “I don’t.” 

He holds one aloft as if in evidence; Sticky Fingers, that iconic dick print. I shrug.

“What, buying records means I collect them? Do you collect shampoo? Toilet paper?”

Eugene grins, turning back to the records as he mutters, “You are _so_ pedantic.” 

He puts on Simon & Garfunkel, and embraces me from behind as I’m rinsing the rice. Makes me pause. His hands locked around my waist and his nose nudged behind my ear. Eugene’s not much taller than me, but when you’re close together like that, it counts. I feel safe, I feel comfortable. I try not to overthink it.

“You hungry?” I ask, and touch a wet hand to the knot of his fingers at my belly button. He hums, and kisses my neck, my nape. The record player spins away in the background, Paul crooning about time as Eugene sways to it, rocking me with him.

“Not that hungry.” His breath smells like red wine, a little. I tip my head back to kiss him, just to fulfil that days-ago urge I’d had. The dark stained dip of his mouth and the wolf crawling up my throat. Then he murmurs, “I wanna say sorry for yesterday,” and I know he can feel me tense up in the circle of his arms.

“Do we have to talk about it?” I ask, eyes on the pan of rice in front of me, glad that I don’t have to look at him for this. I feel him shrug.

“Kinda?” Then he sighs, and squeezes me. “I just feel bad for acting how I did. Don’t wanna think I forced anything out of you.”

_You did_ , I think, but can’t voice it. I thought we’d sidled past this with my joke earlier. Instead, I say, “My therapist says I’m avoidant. Probably for the best, honestly.” It’s not a lie. Jac would be over the moon that I’ve shared this piece of me with somebody, but only after she killed me with her bare hands over not sharing it with her. 

Eugene steps back, then, and I know it’s time to face him. Can’t stand and talk to a pot of soaking rice all night, I guess, even though it does sound preferable. His eyes are soft and concerned when I turn, careful on me, which historically I hate (and still hate even on him, a little). Right now I just feel gooey, vulnerable, one big raw nerve-ending. Not as bad as yesterday, maybe not so raw. 

“Just wanted to tell you now that it don’t change anything,” he says. My eyes dart away, fixing on Sheba scratching at the sofa leg. The knowledge that I have to let her or ruin the moment with Eugene sticks in my goddamn throat a little. I force my eyes away, just as Eugene catches at my wrist, and murmurs, “I’d like if this didn’t end with me leaving tomorrow.”

Now that takes my mind off my cat. I blink, and try and search for any hint of insincerity in Eugene’s face, and come up with nothing. “What?” I ask, and it’s the wrong reply, I can see that immediately. The dip of his eyebrows, concern. I backtrack. “No, I’d like that, I just —” I glance away, never good with eye contact. “I’m surprised you want that.”

“Why wouldn’t I?” he asks, and I have no reply for that. Well, I have a thousand replies, more reasons that he could even listen to, but nothing I could ever say out loud. I feel like the vodka is hanging between us, but then get paranoid that it’s only for me. Am I self-obsessed? Am I self-obsessed with my own issues? Why does everything revolve around my alcoholism? Jesus. Do you see the spin of my thoughts???

His thumb traces the knot of the vein in my wrist. I think about nights huddled drunk in the bathtub, because that’s the safest place a drunk can be, compulsively opening a barely-more-than-one-inch wound in my wrist. Over and over. I know he’s touching the scar. And in the same way, I know he doesn’t care.

I think of his book. I think of his writing. I think of the way he had seen my biggest most shameful secret, the secret that just makes up the sum of me, and still came back to me. Arms around my waist, kiss to my ear. I don’t know how to process it. I don’t quite know how to be wanted as I am.

He’s waiting for me to say something, anything. I can tell; his expression is a strangely easy read. Just one of those faces which splashes everything out as soon as it comes to him. I’m not the same, I’ve had enough boyfriends tell me that. I swallow, then dredge the words up from my gut, the only organ I trust enough to guide me.

“A lotta people have dipped after realising my addiction is real,” I say, softly, and before he can open his mouth and get pedantic, I tack on, “Really real. That it ain’t just something cured by being sick for a while and then keeping off the drink. I’m never gonna get rid of it.”

To his credit, it gives it some thought. I watch the cogs turn, knowing I should be feeling nervous and wondering why I’m not. Maybe it’s because I’ve finally put to words a feeling that I’ve been grappling with for a while. That expectation of having been cured from something as deeply insidious and downright inherent as alcoholism. When in reality getting sober is half the battle. And people don’t realise; they see you outwardly healthy, able to go without a drink without vomiting or shaking, and they think that’s it. Recovered. Rehabilitated. Free from the little demon of drink that they aren’t even haunted by. But it’s half the battle, because you come home and your body doesn’t need it anymore but your mind needs it worse than ever and so you drink, or you don’t but you lose so much time consumed by it that you blink and all of a sudden months have passed you by. One day at a time my ass. It’s about finding things to fill the seconds of the day.

And the shit gets shifted. Those things which fill the seconds of your day aren’t all taking up baking or crochet or shitty carved wood figurines. Pills used to come hand in hand with alcohol but then I quit those and alcohol stepped up to the plate. When I’m sober I smoke cigarettes and inhale anything caffeinated like I’m getting paid to. First couple times I got sober I hurt myself bloody; half self-inflicted, half cruising for stupid little bar brawls just to feel that bright wash of pain. Even that’s been creeping back lately, the hypnotic hover of cigarette to skin. Really, I can predict it all. Once a body gets used to a certain amount of fucking around up there in all your pleasure zones, it’ll do anything and try anything to get that pleasure back. I think the only thing I haven’t tried is sex, and that’s only because I haven’t let go of the way intimacy makes my skin crawl sometimes. But who knows. Six months down the line, another relapse and then another detox? I could be sitting in a sweaty circle at Sex Addicts Anonymous talking about the saddest place I’ve had a dick inside me. 

Eugene squeezes my wrist, and I come back to the room. The smell of the chicken and the sound of Sheba catching her claws in the rug, now. 

“Where’d you go?” he asks, and I look away. His hand loosens on my wrist, but he doesn’t step away. “Merriell,” he says, and I glance at him sidelong, still hesitant for a reason I can’t place. “I’m listening, I hear you. I just wanna understand you.”

A beat. Then I ask, “You do?” and Eugene looks at me like I’m stupid.

“Of course I do. I mean it.”

I blink at him, weighing his words against the open, honest expression there on his face. Against what he said earlier, about staying in touch. I’ve always been the sort of person to find fault in someone; if I can’t find it I make it up, so it’s strange that I’m not giving into that urge as of right now. I want to trust him. I want to know him, and him to know me. I sigh, and shuffle my foot in between his, boxed in by his taller body and held hostage by that expression on his face.

“I’m not very good at keepin’ things up. Not so good at answering my phone.”

Eugene grins at me, rocking back on his heels. “I ain’t much of a texter.”

_You sure?_ I wanna ask, thinking of the few late night texts I’ve gotten from him, but decide to let it go. I understand the gesture. I cut my eyes away, stare out at the night through the window set into the front door, thinking of what I want to say. How I want to say it. 

“It’s hard for me to believe you want me like that,” I settle on. Then I grimace, and try to rephrase. Jesus, words always escape me. “I mean, I find it hard to understand why you’d want me, long-distance, over somebody else.”

Eugene, carefully, murmurs, “We don’t have to talk about commitment or nothin’. I just wanted to tell you that after I go back tomorrow, I wanna stay in touch.” He glances away, and then back, his hands gathered at his belly. Nervous. Bruised hand purple against the other. “No pressure. Nothin’ set in stone.”

I don’t know how to tell him that I _want_ pressure, that I want something solid. That I’ve been drifting through the last five months, hell, the last five years, feeling disconnected and amorphous and wanted and then unwanted all in one breath. But then, how do I say that the thought of being known like he wants to know me is so scary it leaves me feeling breathless? He’s already seen the vodka, is that not the sum of my parts? Does he know there’s barely any more to me? I don’t look forward to the moment he realises that I’m as shallow as a puddle. Just addiction, and once you delve past that you’re scraping fingernails right on the mean little core of me. 

I don’t know how to say it, so I don’t. Just touch my fingers to his hand and say, “Let’s eat, and talk later,” and pretend not to see how he deflates even as he nods, and leans forward to kiss me. 

I kiss him back, and I think of words yesterday, sat on that damp bench amongst all that green. _A problem shared is a problem halved_ Jac’s words, in his mouth. How many people have to say the same thing to you before it becomes truth?

We eat on the sofa with the TV turned up over the vague noise of the bar under our feet; the voices, the music. Sheba begging off of Eugene because she must know he’s a soft touch. The two of us curled into each other; my legs over his knees, chatting idly about the movie we’d missed the beginning of but decided to watch anyway.

“I think I read the book as a teenager,” Eugene says, holding his bowl up and out of the way of Sheba’s curious nose. “Hey, cut it out.”

I chuckle, and nudge at her with my foot. “Baby, stop.” And then, to Eugene, “Was it good, the book?”

He shrugs a shoulder, eyes on screen and face all pink from the heat of the food. I’d meant to make it milder for him but had forgotten; he’s paying the price now. He coughs. “Kinda confusing. I think I remember my teacher sayin’ it was mostly all made up, it was all pretty fantastic.”

I shift in my seat, leaning forward to place my empty bowl on the coffee table, and shoo Sheba away in the same movement. She goes sulkily, and lingers nearby. “Never read it,” I say, and then slyly, “Finished your book last night.”

He turns to me, raises his eyebrows in mock-surprise, but I can see he’s pleased behind that. Eyes all bright and curious. “What’d you think?” he asks, and I shrug, settle myself back into the sofa. Prop my ear to my hand, my elbow to the sofa back, to watch him eat.

“You got me to read a crime novel,” I say, reaching out to push an errant tuft of hair behind his ear. “Doesn’t that say more than anythin’ else could?” 

He grins, and looks away, back to his meal, back to the TV. He’s not watching it though. I watch his profile and watch the way his smile stays, and softens. Like my opinion is that fucking special. Maybe it is.

“I was so sure you were never gonna read it,” he says. “Not after what you said that first night. I figured you were one of those guys who don’t read books from the past ten years or something. Figured you had a stick up your ass about contemporary writing.”

I smile, lazily. “And yet you still had sex with me.”

His ears pink, and my smile widens at the eye roll he sends my way. “I’m human, ain’t I?”

“Apparently so,” I murmur, and then, “Looks like we both got a bad measure of each other.”

He glances at me, curious. The movie really isn’t holding his attention now. “Yeah? What’d you think of me?”

It feels pretty good to have moved past talk of all my neuroses onto steadier ground. Feels pretty good to tease and joke around like normal, like maybe what had happened yesterday was all something I dreamed up. All I have is alcohol-related dreams, it’s no farfetched concept. Lump it in next to the one where my sister tells some unknown face on the phone that I’m like our dad, and it’s just one more thing to bury down deep. For now, I grin at Eugene, rock forward into his space a little just to tease him.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” I say, thinking of the guy I’d first met just under a week ago. I can’t remember much of my first impression of him. Too preoccupied by my goddamn overpriced coffee spilling down the front of my white sweater. Too preoccupied by the sickly urge to be hungover just to have been drunk, and by the day of work I was facing ahead of me. 

“I would.” He’s smiling too. For some reason, I’m gripped by the sudden urge to know what he thought about me.

I tip my chin up, grinning. “You first.” If he’s got the writer’s brain I think he does, I know he’ll have had me pegged one way or another. They can’t help making characters outta people they meet. Judging by the way his eyes slide away, I’m right, and lean forward to nudge at him. “C’mon.”

“Alright,” he says, and I lean across to grab my smokes from the coffee table. “I thought you were pretty uncomfortable. Pretty hot, but mostly kinda uncomfortable.”

“What,” I ask, mumbled around my cigarette as I get it lit. I snap my lighter shut. “Like awkward?”

Eugene frowns, and shakes his head slowly, reaches to put his bowl on the table next to mine. “Nah. Like you were tryin’ your best to cover up how bad you want to crawl outta your skin.” He shifts his shoulders, eyes faraway like he’s watching whatever memory he has of me back in his head. “You made me nervous.”

I stare at him, cigarette smoking away between my fingers, forgotten. I’m not surprised. People have told me many times in ways much harsher than Eugene how I make them uneasy. It’s something I kinda hate and love about myself. Easier to hold people at arms length when you’re freaking them the fuck out. I blink, and then look away, glance to the freezer. I’m not surprised, but why am I struggling to find a reply? 

Dimly, I say, “But you thought I was hot?” It’s a lame excuse at a joke, and I know I haven’t really put any heart into it by the way Eugene glances at me, expression unreadable. There’s a strange beat of silence, in which I spend grimacing internally at myself, and then Eugene speaks.

“You know I did.” And he smiles. I watch him, closely, unsure. “Hot, unattainable, whatever. You didn’t seem interested in nothin’ but crashing the damn car.” He laughs, and I roll my eyes.

“Hey, I’m a good driver.”

He nods, still smiling, and tips his head to the side, dark red hair against my gross orange sofa. “And then we got to talkin’, and you were funny. Made some cheap joke.” He shrugs one shoulder, eyes on me. “Liked you more, then.” 

Ridiculously, I find myself feeling bashful. Shy like a fucking school girl or something. I try to cover it up, kissing my teeth and turning away from him with a roll of my eyes, a muttered, “’S all part of my plan,” even as Eugene grins and catches at my wrist to keep me close. 

“So that’s how I felt,” he says, “That’s what I thought. So what’d you think of me?”

I laugh, trying to twist myself out of his grasp but he’s only got one bum hand; the other holds me strong. “I thought ‘who can win a book prize and still cart around a broken suitcase?’” I cry, as he grapples with me, expression alive and wickedly playful as he presses me back into the sofa. “Ouch!”

“You obviously don’t know a thing ‘bout being a writer then, huh?” he says, and sits back, good hand going to his bad wrist, massaging it. I stay half-laid back against the arm of the sofa, and grin up at him, kneeled between my legs.

“You need a suitcase? I’ll give you a suitcase, man.”

He rolls his eyes at me, pressing his one good hand to my sternum to keep me down. “You think you’re funny.”

I grin. “I do.” 

Vague awkwardness forgotten, Eugene kisses me. Hand still to my sternum, the shadow of a smile to his mouth still, when he pulls away. I still feel a little shy; so ridiculously come over by him. I can’t remember when a guy last made me feel like this. I pass a hand over my face, feeling drunk on him, and push my hair from my face.

“I thought you were very handsome,” I say, and his smile grows. “I thought that orange sweater looked horrible on you.”

“Hey,” he thumps his hand lightly against my chest. “My gramma knitted me that.”

I grin at him, settling my hands behind my head as he shuffles further into the open V of my thighs. “No accounting for taste,” I quip, and Eugene snorts.

“You’re lucky you got me somehow charmed by you,” he says, leaning in closer to kiss me again. This one is slower, more deliberate. I close my eyes, the giddiness in my chest settling down into something warmer, thicker. Honey poured over my ribcage. When Eugene goes to pull away I touch my hand to the back of his head, settling my fingers against the cropped-close hair there. He huffs out a laugh against my mouth, but keeps kissing me, slow and languid, his hand braced to the arm of the sofa by my ear. The other lies between us, pressed gentle to my chest and curled against his own too. I want to put my mouth to the jut of bone in his wrist, to the bruising smeared across it. Kiss it better. 

I wonder if he thinks the same when he kisses me. 

The movie plays on in the background, some ridiculous chase through a jungle playing out unwatched, as he slides his hand under the hem of my t-shirt to grasp at my waist. I sigh into our kiss, slide the hand that had been clutching at the back of his head down the length of his body, settling on his ass as I pull him into me. He chuckles, and then winces, turns his face away from mine just enough to whisper, “This is playin’ hell on my wrist.”

I kiss at his ear, the closest part of him to me, and pat his ass, saying, “C’mon, move then.” 

We switch places. Eugene, on his back now, head pillowed on the sofa arm and me slipping in between his legs, pressing myself up against him with a grin. Kissing always gets me hard. There’s something about the build-up, something about the tease of it. Both of us fully clothed and making out like fucking teenagers on my sofa, like I’m not an adult with an apartment and a very big and empty bed just waiting for us. It’s more fun to start here. The slide into sex from something as unsexy as just talking on the sofa eating dinner is kinda my favourite thing about it. I kiss him, and his hand sinks into my hair, knees on either side of my hips as I let him urge me closer. 

“When you met me,” he breathes, baring his neck to me as I kiss my way down it to the jut of his collarbone, “Did you think it’d end like this?”

I snort, and press a kiss to his adam’s apple, rise back up to meet his eye. “Am I a dick if I say ‘kinda’?”

His eyes crinkle, face so close to me he’s all sweet and blurred out. “You make a habit of this?” he asks. 

“Well,” I murmur, rolling my hips up against his own, knowing he can feel that I’m hard just as I can feel him. “I don’t make ‘em dinner.”

“Well, that’s a comfort.”

I kiss him. Graze my teeth over the swell of his bottom lip, and he melts. In the background, the movie goes to adverts, and I disconnect for a moment just to grab for the remote, to mute the TV before I collapse back into him. Eugene hums, and I kiss him again, his hands on my face cradling me like something special, just like he did that first time he kissed me. I feel warm to my core, that honey melting and sticky in me, and for once I don’t think about the rest of it. Don’t think about the previous day, don’t think about the question that Eugene had asked me before dinner. Everything is him; his hands against my face and his mouth on mine, his smell in my nose and every inch of me pressed up against every inch of him.

I bury my face down into his neck, chasing the thread of that musky skin-smell, groaning out a, “You smell so fuckin’ _good_ ,” against his skin as I do. I feel his laugh rumble in his chest.

“You wanna take this into your bedroom?”

I bite at his neck. “If you wanna ruin my fun you can.” Eugene laughs, and I lean back to grin at him. I wanna fucking eat him up. “What?”

“Ruin your fun?” he asks, smiling, mouth kiss-bruised.

I shrug. “What have you got against making out like horny teenagers?” 

“I don’t wanna fuck you with the cat watchin’,” he teases, and I laugh, and bend down to kiss his cheek.

“You think _you’re_ gonna fuck _me_?” I murmur, right in his ear, pressing my hips decisively to him now. I hear his breath hitch in his throat, feel his hand tighten in my hair. “We’ve got different plans, Gene.”

“You’re terrible,” he shoots back, but the rasp in his voice tells me something else. “You’re awful.”

“And you love it,” I say, and kiss him, long and deep until his hand is clutching at my ass, pulling me as close to him as its possible to be. The two of us grinding together on the sofa like idiots, stupid horny flushed idiots — which I guess we are. His mouth sloppy on mine as he ruts his dick up against me, over and over until we’re doing little more than just moaning into each other’s mouths rather than kissing. He smells even better when he’s turned on. I wanna put my face in his throat, his armpits, the hair at the base of his dick; just wanna memorise the smell of Eugene when he’s hard and wanting for me. It’s addictive, intoxicating — what I’m trying to say is, it’s like the best fucking drink you’ve ever had. Cold beer after some hot outside work you’ve been putting off for weeks. Glass of something neat and strong after a day at work where it seems like you can’t get nothing right. Bottle of wine with someone you love and never wanna stop talking to. I could go on. 

But actually, I can’t. Not with Eugene’s dick pressed up against my own and him sounding so sweet in my ear. Because I want it in my mouth, in my hand, smearing my belly with wet as I fuck him. Bigger than mine, which I love, because the only thing better than a guy with a big dick is _fucking_ a guy with a big dick. I can feel the wolf in my throat, in my chest, laid out across my back. I want him so bad that I don’t know what to do. I want him so bad that I wanna go back to our awkward talk at the stove and tell him I’ll be his, just to make this more intense. 

I almost say it. Almost. My mouth is getting ready to shape the words and everything, but then Eugene says, “C’mon, let’s go,” and it’s lost. I let him drag me to the bedroom and let him strip me, his mouth on my chest as he works at the fly of my jeans. _I’ll be yours,_ I think, as I drop my hand to tangle in his hair, Eugene going easily to his knees to take my dick into his mouth. 

I moan, at the first tease of wet-heat to the head of my dick, and close my eyes, coax him closer with my hand on the back of his head. Eugene always sucks my dick like it’s the last time he’s ever gonna get to do it; heated and eager and fucking filthy with it. I guess this maybe _is_ the last time, and the thought makes me grip harder into his hair, makes me moan around a curse as he takes me deep into his throat for a second, before he backs off. 

“Don’t stop,” I murmur, and his eyes are bright from the way he’d teared up at having me in his throat, but I can see his hand is down the front of his underwear so I know he must like it. I nudge my hips forward, the head of my dick against his lips, and smirk down at him. “Go on.”

I don’t normally top because I really don’t care for it. Haven’t got that streak of possessiveness in me for most people to make me much good at it. But there’s something about Eugene that makes me hungry; something about him that makes me wanna pin him down and fuck him. The soft, long line of his mouth, his nose, those big brown eyes. He’d fucked me good the morning before everything went upside down, and now I feel like returning the favour. Wanting to see him boneless and breathless and desperate for it. I bite at my lip as he takes me deep again, and this time he’s better, he lets me rock my hips forward into his face, lets me watch him gaze up at me and press his tongue to my balls. I curse, a bitten off, “Fuck —” and then pull out of him, watching as he sucks in a breath and blinks up at me. My dick, slick with his spit. He’s putting his mouth back around it before I can even muster the words to ask. 

I don’t let him go down on me for long, because I’m in real danger of coming down his throat before I make good on any of the promises I’ve been cooking up in my head. He goes gracefully, grinning, back of his wrist to his mouth when I pull out of him and then pull him to his feet. His lips, red and swollen and wet, to the purpling bruises on his wrist. I’m gentler with him, then, kiss him slow until he’s soft in my arms, and then I back him up to the bed. Make quicker work of his underwear than he did of mine, and then it’s just me and him with no clothes to keep us apart, skin to skin and pressing ourselves into each other. I kiss him, hand gripped to his jaw, kiss him because didn’t I say I loved it? Until he’s gripping at my arms, pressing his hard dick to the inside of my thigh from where I’m kneeled straddling him. Nudging up against my balls. Jesus, have I said I wanna eat him whole already? 

“Tell me what you want,” I murmur, thumb and index finger at his jaw, holding him in place. His eyes are very dark in the low light of my bedroom, but when he shifts the amber light thrown through the blinks stripes his face, picks up the colours in those deep brown eyes. I tighten my grip on his jaw, and watch his throat bob. 

“I want you to fuck me,” he says, no trace of shyness. I like that about him. Like a man who knows what he wants in the bedroom. 

I smile at him; show my teeth, and bend down to kiss him again. “Stay there.”

Lube from the bedside drawer; a quick dart into the bathroom to rifle through the drawer for a condom. We’d depleted my meagre stash in my bedside table earlier in the week. Then I’m back as if I never left, curling into his warm side as I uncap the lube and spread it on my fingers. He watches me, head pillowed on his hands, skin so pale in the darkness. I think of his hands, pale fish in his lap, sitting in the passenger seat of my car twisting together with nerves. A pulse of affection goes through me, which only sharpens my want; only makes it grow more teeth. I bite at the shell of his ear as I urge his leg over my hip, Eugene on his back and me curled into his side and propped up on my elbow. His arm settles around my neck, pulling me closer and closer as I reach down past his hard, flushed dick, to tease my lube-wet fingers against his ass. 

His fingers clutch at my shoulder. I grin to myself, nose at the sweet-smelling hair at his temple. “Good?” I ask, and he kisses me. “I love when you’re like this,” I add, and he huffs out a laugh that edges towards a noise of pain-pleasure as I work my fingers into him. 

“Like what?” he breathes, open and pale and gorgeous, fingers curling against the side of my neck as I work him out. I always like this part of sex. The actual fucking is good, of course it is, but this is just like the kissing. Maybe I just like a tease. Maybe I just like the quiet moments of intimacy, of someone giving their body over to me. By the time you get to the fucking you’re already there, you’re already hissing filthy shit at each other, no inhibitions or filters. But this, it’s tenuous, it’s fragile. It’s Eugene quiet and moaning and pink-cheeked, hard but shy — or if not shy just, tender. But I can’t say all that. 

Instead, I kiss at the swoop of his cheekbone and murmur, “Wantin’ it. But not quite gettin’ it.” And he laughs, and I grin against his cheek. “What’s funny?”

“I’m gettin’ plenty,” he replies, and I watch his eyebrows arch down in pain-pleasure as I slip my fingers out of him, and push them back in, fucking him slow and steady until I think I can pick up the pace, and do. 

Eugene flushes pink down to his nipples when I fuck him like this. His dick gets wet, leaking in the dark-blond hair on his stomach, jumping with every pass of my fingers over his prostate. Legs spread wider and wider, toes curling, like if he spread them wide enough he could get everything he wants. And I wonder just what he really wants, sometimes. The things which get him off that he’s shy to tell me about, if there’s anything. He seems pretty clean cut but sometimes those are the ones that surprise you. I feel like Eugene would surprise me; he’s done it almost every step of the way so far, so it makes sense he’d surprise me here. And of course that sets off a rabbit’s hole of thoughts I fall down as I work him out, grinding my dick up against any piece of him I can reach as we sweat together. I like anything, if the person I’m sleeping with likes it. I like sex point blank; even better if it’s with someone I’m not afraid to get vulnerable around.

But for now I just finger him close and deep, heads close together, panting into the warm space between our open mouths. I don’t know him good enough to dig into that stuff any time soon. I wonder if I ever will. 

“Please,” he says, and then, “More.” 

The lube is warmed from being pressed between our bodies. I think he’s ready for me but maybe he doesn’t know it yet, or maybe he likes this part just as much as I do. I’m getting lost in fantasies, dirty little imaginings, eyes on his open thighs and the way my hand disappears down past his wet dick. I graze my teeth over his earlobe just to feel him shiver, and wish I could bite his nipples just the same. 

“I bet I could finger you to cumming,” I whisper in his ear, wicked, and he moans as I sink my fingers back into him. More, just like he asked; four, a near-impossible stretch. I realise that I’d give him anything he asked for. 

“I think you’ve got a big head,” he replies, voice low and catching in his throat, fingernails digging into the nape of my neck as I slide my fingers out, and then back in. His head drops back, his dick twitches. “Jesus, Merriell, I —”

“Easy,” I murmur, grinding my fingers up into him. He moans, an urgent, broken-off noise. I press my nose back into his hair, kiss at his ear. “Easy, Gene.” His expression is pinched, eyes screwed shut, and if it wasn’t for the way his toes were curling against my thigh, I’d think I was hurting him. “You can take me,” I breathe, like my dick is even close to big, like it needs this much prep. This is more for me than him, and I wonder if he knows that. Wonder if he knows how hard and aching my dick is, pressed up against him and smearing him wet with pre-cum. Maybe he can feel it, or maybe he’s so tied up in his own head with the feeling of me stretching him open he can’t focus on it. 

“I want your dick,” he bites out, blinking his eyes open to hit me full with the force of those warm doe eyes. Pleading, sweetly desperate. My heart presses against my ribcage.

I swallow. That streak of possessiveness I normally never have, rearing its head. “Tell me again.”

His brows dip, and then his fingers are on my jaw, cradling my face in that precious way I like so much. I close my eyes, and he kisses me, the both of us still, now. Him, still stretched around my fingers, sweat slick between our bodies. “Please,” he murmurs, against my mouth, and it feels like such a treat to see him like this that again I feel that urge to give him absolutely anything he asks me for. His fingers curl against my neck, and then he moans as I slip my fingers from him, and trail them up to cup loosely at his dick. Hard, thick in my hand. I kiss him again, hungrily now. 

“How d’you want it?” I ask, and can feel him smiling against my mouth. 

“However _you_ want me.”

It doesn’t take me even a second to decide. I tap my hand to his thigh, and then move, saying, “Okay, you stay right there.” He shifts, stretching his hands above his head languidly, and grins when I point at him and add, “Don’t move.”

“Don’t think I could.” He pushes his hair back off his face, reaches down to tug lazily at his dick. I drag my eyes from him with more than a little difficulty, and reach for the condom I’d abandoned to the side table. “What,” he asks, as I move to kneel between his legs. “On my back?”

I don’t glance up from the condom wrapper I’m tearing open. “I wanna see you,” I say, and shrug. When I meet his eyes, they’re soft, and I pinch his thigh just to deflate the moment. “Is that okay?”

The corner of his mouth lifts, and he hides it badly; presses the side of his face to his bicep but I can see the smile still. “Fine by me,” he murmurs, “Just as long as you don’t make me wait any longer.”

I snort, flicking the condom packet away from me and reaching for the lube again. “Never pegged you as bossy.”

“Don’t think you had me pegged for nothin’,” he says, a shadow of amusement in his voice. I kiss my teeth at him, shuffling in closer between his thighs, which he spreads invitingly for me. If only Eugene knew the little barrage of thoughts I’d had for him that first day. He wouldn’t be so surprised about me wanting to fuck him face to face now if he did.

I push into him in one long stroke; because I know he’ll like it, because I know he’s more than ready for me. He takes it easy, just drops his head back into the pillows and screws his eyes shut, lips parting. Hand coming up to grasp just loosely at my wrist, laid out flat by his ear, not tugging me or grabbing me, just holding. I grunt at the feeling of him around me, chin dropping to my chest as I bottom out. I hadn’t really taken much notice of my dick’s wants and desires when I’d been fingering Eugene, but it’s definitely being loud enough now. I feel like there’s a thread hooked right below my navel that’s been tugged on, yanked on, urging me to fuck into Eugene just as hard and wild as my dick seems to need. I chew on my bottom lip, willing myself still, watching Eugene’s face smooth out as he gets used to me inside him.

“Okay?” I ask, taking the hand he isn’t holding from its place planted in the mattress, and running the back of my knuckles down his side, light enough to make him shiver. He nods, jerkily, and my hand comes to rest open against his sternum. “Tell me,” I say.

“It’s good,” he breathes, eyes still closed but mouth dropping open once more as I slowly begin to move inside him. “Fuck,” he says, voice low and catching on a moan, “Merriell, it’s so good.”

I test my weight to his sternum, test just how much he can take before he’s breathless, and then I test a little further. Pinning him to the bed with my hand a hot centre to it as I give in to that fishhook buried in my guts, fucking him close and hard, feeling his moans rumbling away under my palm. God, that red flush to his chest, I need — he’s still holding onto my wrist, for dear life now, so I give up the pressure on his ribcage just to tug on his nipples, near the same colour as his skin now with that blush. He moans, surprised and almost too-loud, presses the crown of his head back into the pillows as I grin, and dig my nails in a little. He’s softer than me, has more give to his chest than I do, which is proving endlessly fucking hot as I sink my dick into him and mess with his nipples until they’re red and he’s weakly batting my hand away. 

“Sore,” he groans, but still sinks his hands into my hair to hold me in place when I dip my head to press an apologetic kiss to one of them, my tongue following my lips, and then my teeth follow that. He kisses his teeth, and pats his fingertips to my cheek in mock-chastisement. I bare my teeth into the soft pink skin there, loving the feeling of him clutching me close, loving the feeling of being so wrapped up in him and him so wound around me.

“Fuck, you’re so —” I bury my face into his throat and slow my strokes, doing little more than rolling my hips up into him, grinding into his ass while he puts his arms around me and holds me close. “You just smell so fuckin’ _good_ ,” I moan, again, because it’s sharper now, more of that hot, masculine musky smell to him. I just wanna sink down into him, more than just my dick fucking away at his hole, wanna sink down between the arches of his ribs. Wanna know what his insides feel like. Wanna be there curled up in the thump of his pulse that I test my teeth to, let the sound of it rock me mindless. “Just wanna eat you up,” I add, because I can’t help it, because I let one thing out and now everything’s dying to be let loose. He moans at that one, and my mouth is running away from me, I’m helpless to stop it. “Never wanna cum,” I grunt, his hand a fist in my hair. “Just wanna stay like this.”

“ _Please_ ,” he breathes, turning his face clumsily into mine to kiss at my ear, my cheek, finally landing on my lips so we can exchange several heated, desperate kisses as he clings to me and I cling to him. 

When I break away from him to press his knee to his chest, to bare him open to me, the light from outside is back on and striping him in amber once again. Saturday night smokers lingering outside, triggering the sensor. For once I’m grateful for them; eyes roving hungry over Eugene’s face, not wanting to miss even the tiniest shift of his expression as the wolf snaps its jaws in my throat. His throat and chest peppered with red little bites I know will bloom by morning. His dick hard and ignored, stomach smeared wet from it. Jesus, I wish I’d let him make me his. Wish I hadn’t sidestepped it like I sidestep everything else. And I almost say it, almost tell him I’ll be whatever he wants me to be, but my throat is all seized up so all I can do is moan, and sink into him, and watch him take me with his brows drawn down and his mouth open in pleasure. I wanna count his teeth with my tongue, I wanna grip him so hard he’s bruised when he gets home tomorrow, wanna leave him something to remember me by once the excitement of this brief flirtation has waned. Something as tender as I feel about him, that he can press his fingers into and remember how it had felt when I’d made them. 

So I do. I grip his thigh hard enough he hisses at me, and then I kiss him pliant again and grip his waist so hard he goes limp in my hands. Pale thighs spread and pale lashes catching that orange light from outside, the stripes gentle on his face and lighting him up gorgeous. Just enough for me to watch him open his eyes and fix me with a knowing look, even as he gasps on an exhale at my fingertips digging into his soft waist. The light transforms his dark eyes, and I fall for him over and over, digging into his skin and giving him everything I’ve got until there’s nothing, until I’m coming inside him with no real warning; my orgasm zipping right through me like warm electric as I shiver, and moan, sink down to kiss him sloppily as I fuck my way through it. And he holds me close. Whispers filthy in my ear, “Marking me up?” which only makes me moan, makes me twitch in his ass to know he knew, and still let me do it. 

I pull out of him before he comes too; oversensitive and shivery right to my core, but push my fingers into him before he can complain at me. Head dropping back in the pillows, hand clutching in the bedsheets under us, at that. I grin. I feel both sleepy and brightly awake, sated yet still wanting. “Gonna cum on my fingers?” I murmur, just to see him react, and get exactly what I wanted with the answering moan, the way his toes curl as I press my fingers deeper into him. And then, softer, because he’s making me feel all fucking gooey deep down in my stomach, I add, “What d’you want, Genie?”

He’s sweet like this. Singleminded, turned on, chasing his own orgasm. Hand coming to curl in the hair at the back of my head, guiding me down to where his dick is hard and flushed against his stomach. I watch him as I go, still pumping my fingers in his ass, drinking in the sight of him toeing the edge so close. Every line of his body taut with it. Cheeks red and lips spit-wet and well-kissed, unable to hold in a moan as I get my mouth around his dick and sink down around him. Hollow my cheeks out and suck, let him into my throat, hum around him until he gets the hint and uses my hair as leverage to fuck my face. I can’t see him anymore but it’s worth it; I’ve always loved this more than anything. More than kissing, even. To be so completely claimed up and consumed, used up so thoroughly, his hand a vice in my hair and his dick just the right side of too big and aching my jaw with the stretch. 

“Can I come inside —?” Eugene gasps out, and I can hear how close he is in the shaky tightness of his voice, in the way his dick is fucking erratic into my mouth now. The taste of him; salt, musk, sweat. I never want it to end, but I wanna taste him more than I want that so I flick my eyes up to meet his, try and urge him without having to pull away from his dick. And he must get the hint because he catches his lip between his teeth and screws his eyes shut, breaths coming fast through his nose before all of a sudden his fingers tighten even harder in my hair and my mouth is full of him, and I’m moaning just as loud as he is at how he tastes. 

On and on, until it all becomes too much for him and he hisses, shies away from me, pulling me off his dick just that moment too early so I catch cum on my lips, my chin. If my dick was even capable of getting hard again after coming so soon, I know it’d be perking up between my thighs at that. I pull my fingers from him, which has him making a noise so soft and so whimpery that I shuffle my way up the bed to litter kisses on his face, murmuring a low, “Did I hurt you?” even as he pats lazily at my cheeks. 

“No,” he sighs, and turns his face to kiss me. His hand slides along my bare shoulders, pulling me into him. I go easy. “God, that was good.”

I grin to myself, burrowing down into the sweaty hollow of his throat. “I know.” His answering laugh comes up through his chest, and he pats at my shoulder sleepily. I add, “Lemme go wash up,” to which he groans, and clings even tighter. I can’t keep my smile inside, my whole body thrumming with how good I feel, with how good that had felt with him. I pinch the outside of his thigh, and repeat myself.

“Come back before I fall asleep,” Eugene slurs, and I kiss him once before I untangle myself from his arms, padding through the darkness to the bathroom, which blinds me with its brightness. From the bed, I hear Eugene make a disgruntled noise as he too is blasted with the light.

I shed the condom into the trash, piss, wash my hands. Swipe my toothbrush around my teeth mostly for show, and then splash water onto my face before I leave the bathroom for the warmth of my bed. Warm and all full up with satisfaction the whole time, meeting my eyes in the bathroom mirror and baring my teeth at my reflection, my cheeks red and sweat shining on my forehead. The wolf, sated in my chest. _Hopefully I’ve given him something good to take home_ , I think to myself, eyeing my reflection. I try not to think about that want I had felt for him to make me his. Try and write it off as some mindless mid-sex thought I’d conjured just to make my dick harder.

Eugene is dozing when I come back to bed, flat on his back with the sheets tangled at his feet, still smelling like sex when I bury my face into the hair on his stomach to kiss him there. He makes a noise, hand coming to scratch lazily through my hair. 

“Come up here,” he murmurs, and I come up there, gather him into my arms and smile at the hum of pleasure he makes. 

“Was that good?” I ask, and his face moves against my chest. A nod. 

“Yeah, you know,” he trails off into a yawn, his voice sleepy and coy. I grin at the ceiling, waiting. “Pretty good.” The rasp to his words betray him. Like I wouldn’t be able to tell he’s had his mouth open panting and moaning for so long, even if I hadn’t been the one making him do it. I roll over onto my side, and he shifts with me so we’re facing each other.

“It was better than that,” I say, and by that orange light outside the window I see him grin, eyes heavy lidded and dark beyond belief. His hand curls at my bicep. 

“It was okay,” he says, and I pinch at his hip, his thigh, his waist, until he’s laughing, slapping me away, insisting, “Okay, okay, fuck, it was really fuckin’ good, okay?” 

I kiss him, feeling huge with everything that’s being held inside of me. “Okay.” And then, “You’re tired?”

The alarm clock over his shoulder burns _11:55_ into my eyes, red on black. In the dim light I see him blink, see the corner of his mouth lift. “You fucked the life outta me.” He sighs. I wait a beat, watch the clock tick over a minute, and then his hand squeezes my arm. “Why? Don’t wanna sleep yet?”

I’m not tired in the slightest. Sex never makes me drowsy; just perks me right up into wakefulness. That dopamine rush never gets old. I feel bright-eyed and awake and bursting at the seams with feelings that I’m too fucked out to be careful about. It’s the perfect storm. I watch another minute blink away on the clock before I reply, “I’ve been thinkin’.”

Eugene hums, sounding a little more than half asleep, but like he’s valiantly trying to be interested. It makes me wanna kiss him. It makes me wanna spill my guts. “Oh yeah?” he mumbles. “About what?” And then, like an afterthought, “You were thinkin’ while you were fuckin’ me?”

I snort, and press my lips to his temple. “In a good way.”

“Sure.”

The room is dark and quiet around us. Only the distant noises of the bar underneath; a comforting sort of white noise to me by this point. “Thinking about what you asked me earlier,” I say, and feel him perk up a little. 

His voice is hesitant when he speaks, still a little rough around the edges. “Yeah?”

I hum, tongue too lose and heart too far ahead of my brain to stop and think about what I’m about to say. “I wanna keep in touch. I don’t want this to end after I see you through security tomorrow.” 

The dark, warm room rings with the silence that follows. The clock flicks past midnight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow, it's been a long time since i updated this! i'm so sorry for the delay, i never thought it would stretch so long but for some reason this proved a difficult chapter to get into the flow of, and (2 be candid) this is a hard fic to write considering i've been struggling with my own drinking. so it sat on the backburner for a while for my own health. SO thank you for being patient, it means a lot, and i hope you enjoyed this chapter :~) one more to go! i promise it won't be another month until you see the end


	7. Chapter 7

“You really feel that?” he asks, and I have to drag my eyes from the alarm clock and refocus on him, to fully absorb what I’d let slip. Sex always gives me a loose tongue, shit. Well, no going back now.

“Wouldn’t say it if I didn’t.”

I watch him absorb that, the side of his face lit by the streetlamp. From what I can see of his expression, it’s torn. It’s more than enough to light a little flame of unsureness in my chest. One that can only burn and burn once it’s caught, and doesn’t dim when he smoothes his hand over my arm, and says, “I hope you don’t feel pushed into that ‘cos I brought it up earlier.”

I look at him, at his sweet profile and the way his brows are dipped in worry, and wish I could dig into his head and work out what he’s thinking. That big, quick brain. Would I find him as neurotic as me? It hardly seems likely. I touch my thumb to the corner of his mouth, and murmur, “I’m a very hard man to be pushed.”

His mouth quirks against my touch. In my chest, the flame gutters. 

“What did you really think of me when you first met me?” he asks, and it’s not at all what I’d been expecting to hear from him that it throws me for a second, a beat of silence that grows as I try to figure out what he wants to hear from me. Then, as if sensing it, he adds, “Be honest. I’m curious. I think I gotta good enough measure on you by now to know it didn’t start and end with my sweater.”

“It was pretty overwhelming,” I say, quickly, and he grins, but says no more. Waiting, patient. I wonder if this is a test. “You surprised me,” I start with, because it’s true. Because it’s the most overwhelming memory I have of our first meeting. “I was having a distracted day, I was being an asshole on purpose but you didn’t rise to it. I guess I liked that.”

Eugene snorts. “Bet that doesn’t happen much.”

“No,” I say, and laugh. “No, I’m normally pretty good at making people rise to my bullshit.” Eugene doesn’t reply, so I keep going, unravelling all those tucked away little feelings I’d had that morning. “Everything I tried kinda bounced off you, until I said that thing about writing. I guess it just made me curious, made me wanna work out what your deal was.” I pause, and then squeeze his cheek playfully. “Still kinda do.”

He kisses me. “That’s all?”

“I thought you were handsome,” I say, and something in his expression urges honesty out of me like a fish on a hook. “But I was more focused on how bad I wanted to be at home in my bed, really.”

His eyes crinkle. “That’s fair. I was thinking the same.” He touches his fingers to my wrist, and I curve my hand over his cheek, holding him like he holds me. Outside, the streetlamp blinks off, and the room falls into darkness. I miss looking at him, but feel glad for it despite it. I’ve never been good at talking when the other person can see my face. It takes work to keep emotion from it. There’s a reason why I turn away from Jac during our sessions. 

“I really do mean it,” I say, and he hums, a question in the noise. “That I think we should stay in touch.”

His fingers squeeze my wrist. “Me too.” His voice, disembodied in the darkness. If it wasn’t for my hand on his face, his knee pushed between mine, I’d feel untethered. “I just wanna make sure that you’re sure.”

I swallow, and close my eyes. This is why I don’t like to do this. This is why I like to keep people at arm’s length. There’s always this expectation of vulnerability, or candidness, that makes me recoil. “There’s a lot of things that I don’t know how to say out loud,” I murmur. I feel weighed down with them, fucking sodden and heavy and cold with all the things I want to say to people but that I’m incapable putting to words. I’d be a horrible writer. 

Eugene hums, and then he shifts, draws me in closer to him. I go stiffly, wanting the closeness but not wanting to give myself over to that want. 

“You won’t ever know if you don’t try,” he breathes, pressing his nose into the crown of my head. 

He’s right, I know he is. Lying there with my face tucked in close to his throat, I find myself thawing. I want that bright after-sex feeling back. I wanna snuff this stupid flame of unsureness out in my lungs. 

“This week has been good for me,” I say, quietly, like if I keep my voice low I can pretend I’m not saying a thing. “Having you around — it makes me feel good. Makes me feel like,” I huff, embarrassed laughter. “Normal, or something.”

His hand draws through my hair, silent. 

“I got into this place where I was like, unhappy and just fuckin’ comfortable with it, you know?” I pause, and he hums. “Like without drinkin’, nothin’ made me feel happy. But nothin’ made me feel good when I _was_ drinkin’ so.” I try another laugh that comes out even sadder than the other attempt, and screw my eyes shut. “Just resigned myself to it.”

He squeezes me. I wonder what he’s thinking, and feel that urge once again to dig inside him until I find out.

“You are normal,” he murmurs, and then laughs. “As normal as anybody is. Maybe I should say, nobody’s normal.”

I make a noise. _Most people are more normal than me,_ I want to say, but can’t force the words out. They sound too self-pitying, especially after what I’d just said. Instead I swallow them down, and try to see the kindness in Eugene’s words. He means well — that’s what matters, right? I reach up to kiss him, and he goes easily at my touch, which settles me somewhat. I don’t know when I got to expecting everyone to say the exact right thing to me every single time. Like the cast of people in my life were planted just to let me hear exactly what I want to hear. But then again, I’ve always been an unreasonable person.

“So what d’you think?” I murmur, steering the conversation back to its brighter beginning. I slip my hand into his hair, trying to see as much of him as possible in the dark room. Trying to see if his face shows up anything his words might not. But it’s too dark, and I’m too close to him, and deep down, I think Eugene is too honest to have something show on his face and not in his words. 

“Well, I’m the one who brought it up, so.” I see him grin, and pinch his arm in retaliation. He laughs. “So yeah, sounds pretty good.” 

“Good,” I mumble, and smooth my fingers over where I pinched at him. Something is swelling in my chest, pushing out that wavering flame of unsureness with how big and warm it feels. I feel embarrassed for what I admitted to him, embarrassed that he knows about the unhappiness I try so hard to keep hidden, but somehow it’s taking a back seat. Like it’s possible to have two emotions at once, ha. Who’d have thought it? Like I said, emotional multitasking is so not my forte. 

“This week has been fun,” Eugene muses, rolling onto his back to stare up at the ceiling. I curl into his side, pillow my cheek on his bicep to listen to him. Feels gratifying to hear it wasn’t all in my head. “And I wanna see where this goes.” His hand makes a shape in the air. “Feels…like there’s something, y’know?” 

I snort, and press a kiss to the soft skin of his inner bicep. “Yeah,” I murmur. “I know.” I wish I could take back what I said to him, just to not have it hanging over our last night together, but I know there’s nothing to be done. He puts his arm over my shoulders, draws me into his chest, and I can feel the concern tugging at his attention even as he kisses me. I don’t know what it is. I always feel hyperaware of other people’s feelings. 

We lie together in silence for a long time. My eyes open and trained on the wall, my thoughts a spin. Silent for so long I’m sure Eugene’s asleep. In fact, I almost try and slip out of his grasp so I can go be awake and overthink in the living room instead of the bed with him, but his hand tightens on my arm and I freeze. 

His voice is thoughtful when he speaks. “You know, you don’t have to resign yourself to anything.”

God, to think he’s been lying here all that time musing on what I said. I could curl up and die from the shame of it. This is why talking about feelings is for therapy only. Jac’s never gonna turn to me in bed after a particularly good round of sex and bring up some sad shit I’d said to her. Well, I don’t think she will. Never say never, though, right?

“Okay,” I say, and then a stillness settles over us. That tangible kinda stillness that you know is forced. He wants me to say more. I want to never say another word again in my life. 

“Feelin’ good is what everyone deserves,” he murmurs, voice dreamy. “And it’s what you deserve too.”

His finger touches my cheekbone. I want to say, _I made eye contact with myself in the mirror! What more do you need from me?_ but can’t. Instead I hum, and try to do that age-old impossible task of expressing myself. Jesus, there’s been a lot of it this week. 

“I told you this week was good for me,” I murmur, as his fingers trace my hairline. “I ain’t unhappy all the time now. It comes and goes.”

“Oh,” he says, and I can feel him probing my answer for lies. He won’t find any. I’m not telling the full truth, but it’s just close enough to it to keep me from feeling guilty. “You know,” he adds, fingers stilling in my hair. “I know how it feels. Don’t think I’m comin’ from some place of not-knowing.”

I pat at his chest. “I never said you were.”

“I lost a long time to bein’ an unhappy person,” he breathes, and half of me wants to cover my ears while the other half is clinging to every word. I hate vulnerability in others just as much as I’m loving it coming from him. “Unhappy, and angry at myself for it.”

“What,” I mumble, “Then you just pulled yourself up by the bootstraps?” 

It’s meant to be a joke, but I think he doesn’t take it as one. To be honest, I’m not sure if I even put any effort into delivering it as one. He squeezes at my shoulder, but doesn’t laugh. “No, I didn’t. It’s still here.” In the darkness, I see his hand drift to his chest, then to his collarbones. “I guess I got used to talkin’ over it a little more.”

“Well, I’m workin’ on it,” I say.

“I can tell you are.”

From anyone else, that’d sound mocking. But Eugene is so quiet, so earnest, in this moment that I can’t take it for anything but face value. To be seen — to have _been_ seen. What a feeling. 

I close my eyes, just as the light outside comes on, and voices drift up from the street. 

——————  
Eugene fucks me in the shower the next morning, then massages shampoo into my hair as I close my eyes against the spray of the shower-head. Washes it out gentle, wipes the soap from my eyes and then kisses me, and I do the same for him. 

His hair dries fluffy after I go at it with a towel, which he pretends to bitch and moan about but I know he doesn’t care. Just wants an excuse to shove at me, I think. It’s a nice day outside, and it’s putting me in a good mood, despite Eugene’s flight looming, despite our pillow talk the night before.

“Breakfast?” I ask, because for once I’ve got food in the fridge, and I’m not ready to take him to the airport early just to surrender him to waiting alone in the terminal. He catches me around the waist, and draws me close enough until he can press a kiss to the top of my head. Those all-important couple inches he has on me coming into play again. 

“What you got?”

I hum, stepping back from the circle of his arms to yank the fridge open and survey the contents. “Eggs. Bread? Probably got home fries in the freezer.”

There’s a beat of silence. I stare hard at the pickles floating in their juice, listening to the coffee pot splutter and sigh into the quiet. Then Eugene makes a noise, and I hear him step away towards the kitchen table. 

“Eggs and toast is fine by me.”

Eggs and toast it is. Eugene likes his toast well on its way to burned, his eggs fried runny, so I get to make fun of him a little as we eat, sat together at my too-small kitchen table. Knees bumping underneath it, me watching Eugene roll his eyes as he goes to pour himself another cup of coffee. It’s still early. The room is cool and grey with morning light. He steals a cigarette from the pack I’d left on the table, and nudges his foot against mine until I find him a lighter.

“So what’re you gonna do when you get home?” I ask, watching him light up. He shrugs a shoulder, crossing his leg over his knee as he leans back in his seat.

“Throw out all the food I’ve spent this week realising I left in my fridge.” He exhales smoke towards the ceiling. “Remembered I had half a loaf of sourdough in my cupboard two days ago. Scared to go back, honestly.”

“Gotta hope it’s gonna kick in for rent,” I murmur, and he laughs. I light myself a cigarette too, after I clear the dishes into the sink, where they’ll probably languish until tomorrow evening, knowing me. “So what?” I ask, joining him back at the table. “Just that?”

He hums, tilting his head to the side as he watches Sheba cross the room. “Probably spend the week in San Francisco before flyin’ home to spend a little time with my family. Haven’t seen them since the summer, and I promised my mom I’d stop by.”

“Only touchin’ base for a second then.”

“Guess so.” He moves to ash into the dish on the table, and I watch him, hung up on how he looks in the pale morning light. His dark red hair clean and fluffy, sticking up in such a way that he looks young, and boyish. The purpling bruising at his wrist, the hand holding his cigarette. It doesn’t seem to be paining him as bad as it did the other day. “It’ll be nice though,” he continues. “Gonna get to see my nephew; he’s a fuckin’ riot.” The corner of his mouth quirks, amused and fond. My heart squeezes in my chest. 

“How old is he?”

“Five,” Eugene says, and then pulls a face. “Or six. Somethin’ around there.”

My sister has a kid. Haven’t seen him since I stayed down there to dry out last. I can’t place an age to him; I never asked her. He used to sit at my feet and I’d carve him little animals to play with, used to watch him in those couple hours between him getting home from school and my sister getting home from work. The both of us sat out on the porch in the sun, the smell of cedar in my nose and my thumb red and tender from the knife’s edge. A thoughtful kid, nothing like me or Millie were. Guess he has space to be quiet and thoughtful in ways we never had; me especially. With boys it’s different. I remember being glad to see her letting him be; remember looking at him and wondering what I could’ve been like if I’d been left to be myself. 

“Cute,” I comment, because the silence is stretching. Eugene is eyeing me like he thinks I’m teasing him. “I’ve got a nephew ‘round the same age,” I offer, and lean forward to tap ash into the dish. “Never seen somebody who can get so upset over nothin’.” 

Apart from myself, ha.

“Yeah, they’re freaky,” Eugene murmurs. “It’ll be nice to see him. Gotta make sure I bring him somethin’ or he’ll have my damn head.”

We’re both sidling around the topic of his leaving. Sitting there stealing glances at each other, touching knees under the table and laughing. It’s nice, it’s comfortable. It’s finite. 

Eugene washes the dishes while I feed Sheba, sparing me from having to scrape myself out of whatever mood I’ll be in later to do them. I wonder if he knows, or whether he’s just the type to do someone else’s dishes. Both are pretty in-line with what I know of him so far. 

I kiss him, his hands still wet and soapy when they come to settle at my waist. I think of how my apartment will feel without him in it, without him just a car ride away. The pulse of unhappiness I feel makes me realise that I’ve gotten pretty used to him being around, and I kiss him again just to savour this moment together. I wanna go to sleep next to him tonight, don’t wanna wake up alone anymore. I don’t know what it means but it must mean something, right? 

I itch to text Jac. She doesn’t like me bringing issues to her over text, says she likes to give them the ’space they deserve’ in our meetings together, but I halfway believe I’ll have convinced myself that this was nothing by Wednesday. Eugene kisses me again, a decisive peck to my lips before he pats at my cheek.

“You wanna head out soon? Don’t wanna be late.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I grumble, letting him step away from me. “Get your shit together and we’ll go.”

I take the sofa cushions up this time. Don’t wanna even invite the prospect of Sheba pissing on them while I’m at the airport. If she didn’t do it at the start of the week, she’d definitely do it now. She’s good at distracting me like that.

We stop for gas, and I stress eat a Milky Way and drive one-handed with Eugene giving me that nervous sidelong look I remember from when I picked him up. He doesn’t ask for a smoke this time. It’s weird to think of what’s happened between us in this week now that we’re nearing the end; driving the same route only backwards, closing out the little loop of our week. I fiddle with the radio, absently, skipping between stations until Eugene swats my hand away.

“Stop,” he says, and then, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothin’, “ I say, and then groan. Always in the fucking car. “Honestly, nothin’. Just thinkin’ about gettin’ home and —” I make a noise that I hope communicates everything I can’t. “Whatever. Doin’ nothin’ and waitin’ to see if you’ll text when the plane lands.”

A beat of silence. When I glance at Eugene, his brow is furrowed, staring at the road. Pale hands in his lap, just like the first time I had him here.

“Why d’you think I wouldn’t text you?” he asks, finally, turning to look at me. I hunch my shoulders, self-conscious, uncomfortable with having to talk like this in the daylight with him looking at me. Breaking that code of car-talking in which you’ve both gotta face forwards. 

“Dunno,” I mutter. “Not gonna pretend every thought I have makes sense.”

He laughs at that; a disbelieving huff that only just toes the line of amusement. “Okay. Alright, well.” He pauses, and I keep my eyes ahead, on the tail lights in front of me. “I’m gonna text you, so.”

“It sounds so fuckin’ juvenile,” I mutter, and that makes him laugh for real. “What? It does.”

“I know,” he says, and slides his hand over the centre console to squeeze my knee. “It’s fine. We’ve all gotta act a little juvenile sometimes.”

He doesn’t need to know I’m always operating on some level of arrested development. I bare my teeth at the road. On the GPS, our minutes together are counting down. In my chest, something is beginning to ache.

“I feel like we didn’t come to anything last night,” I blurt. He looks at me, surprised. I can see it from the corner of my eye, can feel his emotion like it’s mine. His silence: he wants me to say more. I don’t know how much I can muster past that initial blurt. 

“About what?” he asks, when it becomes clear I’m not ready to expand. Suddenly, I find myself in his shoes. Jesus, I must be difficult to have a fucking conversation with. Jac should go ahead and charge me double. 

“I don’t know,” I say. “That’s the problem.”

It’s true, there’s been this lingering feeling of incompleteness hanging over me all morning, but I just can’t put my finger on what I think feels unsaid. And I can’t tell if whatever it is was meant to be said by me or by him. It’s screwing with me. This feeling of something up in the air between us, something aching in my chest wanting to be acknowledged. 

Eugene doesn’t say anything, and I don’t blame him. Again, I feel pity for Jac, who has to try and thread meaning from me week after week. 

We drive, and I watch the road and Eugene watches it too, and the arrival time on the GPS comes closer and closer. Signs for the airport, now. I think about my empty bed. I think about the pillows, that will undoubtedly smell like him because the world is cruel to me. I swallow. Something is pressing in my throat.

“I said it before but I wanna say it again,” I murmur, my voice almost lost to the sound of the wheels on the road. I sense his head turn towards me. I keep my eyes forward. “This week has been really good for me. Felt like for the first time I wasn’t just goin’ through the motions, just like, wearin’ a groove into the floor.” I laugh, a weak attempt at one. I don’t know why, but my hands are sweaty on the steering wheel. “And now I’m afraid I’ll go right back to where I was, and I’ll only have myself to blame.”

I don’t think I have to tell him how close I had been to drinking at the start of the week. I hope I don’t.

“Why do you think that?” he asks. I can’t work out his emotions from his voice, and don’t want to risk a glance at his face to read it just in case I look and find him looking too. 

I shrug, feeling cagey but trying not to. If I knew why I felt it, would I be worrying about it? “I don’t know. Guess I just got a feelin’ about it.”

“This week bein’ good doesn’t end with me leavin’,” he says, and then makes a noise. “Didn’t even start with me gettin’ here. That’s all you, y’know.”

“What do you mean?”

Eugene shifts in his seat, and out of the corner of my eye I see his hand go for my smokes. I motion for him to light me one too.

“You had a good week all on your own, Merriell.” His voice is soft, if a little tired. He lights up a smoke, and passes it to me. “And you’re gonna have a good one startin’ tomorrow too, if you want it, and you’ll keep havin’ good weeks until we see each other again.” I hear the click of a lighter, then his breath drawing through it. “And then we’ll have a fuckin’ great week, huh?” 

The GPS says twelve minutes until we hit the airport. Already, I can see planes, can see the tall grey towers of the place. 

“Just like you got yourself to blame for a bad week, it’s only you makin’ it a good week.” The rushing sound of air through the twin open windows makes a deafening noise now we’re on the highway. Eugene has to raise his voice over it. I glance over, and watch his hands twist in his lap, fingers gentle over the bruising on the bony knob of his wrist. “D’you see what I mean?”

“I do,” I mutter. “Just takin’ it in.” Chewing it over, absorbing it, letting it sit in my stomach. 

Once when I was nine my dad ruined the last family holiday we ever took. It wasn’t huge. Travelled up from New Orleans to stay in Baton Rouge with my aunt for a week; watched my dad get drunk and my aunt get mad at him the whole time. Me and my sister playing in the street most days, coming in for dinner and then fleeing back out into the twilight until it got too dark, and our aunt called us in. In retrospect maybe it was as much of a holiday as my trips to stay with my sister are. In retrospect, my dad and I may have more in common than I can even comprehend. 

I can’t remember what he did to ruin it, though I’m sure Millie would. She was one of those silent, watchful kids. She probably remembers every painful second of it. All I remember is my dad yelling so hard a vein popped out in his forehead, and I remember my aunt sitting there with her elbow on the always-sticky plastic tablecloth that was draped over her dining room table, and a cigarette between her red-claw nails. Just sitting there while he practically blew the walls of her house down with how mad he was. Maybe I don’t remember it because it wasn’t the important part. Because later, I came to her, cowed because my dad’s anger always did that to me. And I asked her: _was he angry because of me?_ I can still remember the way her sharp red nails had pressed into the skin of my arm, gripping me and holding me there as she looked into my eyes and said very fast and very low, _your daddy has brought everything that happens onto himself._

Anyway, like I said. We’ve got more in common then I can even know. Sometimes it’s hard to work out who to blame. 

“I can’t wait to hang out again,” I say, instead of everything else in my head. It’s still the truth, even if I’m censoring a little. I smile at the road, and then finally glance his way. Finding him looking at me, and finding that it makes something stupid and giddy light up in my chest. “Maybe I’ll come down to you.”

“You’ll like it,” Eugene says, a smile on his face as he turns away from me. It makes me warm to think he knows whether I’d like something or not. 

I park in short-stay just like last time, and worry again about staying long enough to have to pay. Eugene seems to sense it; he’s in a good mood, despite me being weird and difficult on the drive over. Just grins at me as I pull his case out of the trunk with a grunt.

“Being paid for this?” he asks, as I wave his hand away from the handle of the case. I snort, locking the car behind me as we make for the entrance. 

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

I’m not. Just dragging his fucking busted suitcase for free like a fool. 

The hall is jammed. I stand to the side and fiddle with my smokes as I wait for Eugene to check in and check his bag, playing over and over our exchange in the car. Then once that’s exhausted, I start to run through the week, every little weird or embarrassing moment so that when he does return I know I’m awkward and stiff. Thinking about the fucking vodka in my freezer, for God’s sake. Wondering how he even got back into bed with me after that. 

He seems to sense it, though I don’t think I’m doing a good job at hiding it like I usually do. My face feels mask-like with how badly I’m trying to remain normal. Thinking about my dad screaming at my aunt. Thinking about her nails in my arm and thinking about Eugene’s bruised hand over mine sat on that damp wooden bench with him. The green smell of the forest. The scented-candle-to-cover-up-cigarettes smell of my aunt’s house.

“Merriell,” Eugene says, and his hand closes around my wrist. “What’re you gonna do when you get home?”

“I dunno,” I say. I took the day from work for this. “Go hang out with Burgie, I guess.”

Eugene’s brow furrows, just slightly. “Sounds good,” he murmurs, and then repositions his backpack on his shoulders. “Text me, okay?”

“Okay,” I say. And then, “I’ll walk you to security.”

I feel in a daze. The week has been so short and yet so long that this doesn’t really feel real. We walk alongside each other and his hand brushes mine but doesn’t take hold of it. I don’t know if he even realises we’re touching. Then security rushes up too quick and we linger awkwardly at the tide of people milling around, saying goodbye to loved ones and stuffing all their liquids into those little plastic bags.

Eugene touches the back of my hand, and then my waist. His big brown eyes boring into me, careful and soft. “Take care of yourself,” he says, and adds, “Thank you for this week.”

I wonder if it’s been as good for him as it has been for me. I feel torn; halfway between melancholy over his leaving and something else I’m unwilling to name. I dip my head, and he gathers me closer into a hug.

“Don’t be a stranger,” I murmur, and he squeezes me.

“Same to you.”

I huff. “I’ll try.”

A long beat of silence, in which he holds me and I let him. The departures hall is busy with the chatter of people, like a wave of noise. I wish we’d spent more of a moment together in my apartment. Something about this feels impersonal with how watched I feel. When we part, I kiss him, and he kisses me back like nobody is watching us at all. I close my eyes, and try to remember how his hand feels, gentle on my jaw.

“Fly safe,” I say. “If I don’t hear from you on the other end I’ll be mad.” It’s a weak little way to convey my feelings, but he smiles anyway, and laughs.

“Sure I’ll have hell to pay.” His hand touches my cheek. “Don’t worry, I’ll call you. Drive safe.”

The last glimpse of him I get is the back of head, dark red hair in the crowd, and then in a blink he’s gone. I’m left standing alone in a sea of people going somewhere better, and I go sit in a toilet cubicle just to be alone with myself before rejoining the crowd that takes me back out to my car. 

I’m thinking about that ruined family holiday as I start the car and back out of the space. Isn’t it weird, the things that come to you? Eugene is probably loading all his shit into a plastic tub as we speak.

I’m thinking about the smell of hot tarmac. Thinking about how me and my sister played with those green army figurines on the pavement, how we melted them with the evil eye of the sun through a magnifying glass we found in a drawer. Puddle of army-green plastic. My dad’s face, scarlet. I still don’t know what got him heated like that but I know my aunt had a steady supply of liquor so, what came first? I remember sitting on the sidewalk with my sister between my knees, braiding her hair close and tight to her scalp in silence. Did my nephew’s just the same, when I came to stay. His hair is curlier than mine, curlier then hers even. Just the two of us on the porch, Louisiana sun, vodka on my mind.

I listen to the radio as I drive home, but couldn’t tell you what station. In a daze, lost in my memories. Thinking about Eugene flying home to be with his family, thinking about how the last time I saw what remains of my own I was irritable and sick and weaning off booze. One can of beer I’d savour as long as possible, and then shaky hands for the rest of the day. Smoking cigarettes on the deck while my nephew ran circles around me until Millie came home from work, tired with bags under her eyes. I was like another kid for her, if any kid of hers would’ve been allowed to be as unpleasant as I was then. 

It’s sitting heavy in me, the remembering. Something about what Eugene had said to me has shook it all loose. Have I not been wanting a good life hard enough? That was what he said, wasn’t it? All I do is want. It’s where the drinking began; I wanted to feel good all the time and never have to sober up and face reality. It’s all I wanted as a kid, to have a life that made me feel happy. How much wanting do I need to do before it’s enough?

Maybe it’s less about wanting and more about doing. Maybe I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.

I eat leftovers from last night’s dinner cold, stood at the sink staring off into the street through the front windows. I’m not hungry, but it’s just something to do with my hands. Downstairs, I can hear Elton John crooning away; Burgie setting up the bar. I almost go down just like I’d told Eugene I was going to, but something stops me. 

My phone chimes in my back pocket. I pull it out, read the text I’ve been sent, and then without thinking I hit ‘call’ and raise the phone to my ear. Grey sunlight on my living room floor. My breath caught tight in my chest.

It rings for such an interminable amount of time that I almost chicken out and end the call; go as far as pulling it away from my ear to press the red button before I see it connect, and hear a faraway _hello, Merriell?_ on the other end. My heart lodges itself up into my throat, stood there stock still with my phone held away from me like it’s something poisonous. I hear another, _hello?_ and raise my phone back to my face just in time to hear:

“— You know, it’s childish to call and not say anything.” A huff follows; deeply irritated. I almost smile. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you for weeks.”

“You know where I live,” I murmur, a smile tugging my mouth as all my frozen fear leeches from me. “Coulda dropped by.”

My sister makes an affronted noise. “What, gotten someone to look after Neal so I could fly up and wring your neck for screening your fuckin’ phonecalls?” 

I drop my eyes to my feet, smiling for real now. “It’s nice to hear your voice.”

Millie snorts. “Could’ve heard it when I called you yesterday. Or the day before that.” I can tell she’s not as mad as she’s making out to be. God, it’s comforting to hear that familiar exasperation from her. Millie is one of the steadiest people I can think of, besides Burgie. Always reacts the exact way you think she will, is always in the right place when you need her.

“Well you got me now,” I say, and set the empty bowl of leftovers aside as I cross the room to take a seat on the sofa. “What d’you want?”

“Don’t want anything,” she says, and I can hear the rush of the road in the background of the call, and realise I must be on the phone speaker. She sounds a little distracted, now she’s done yelling at me. I try to picture her; the inside of her beat-up grey Nissan, that strong Louisiana sunlight and her hair probably frizzing with the stress I cause her. Her voice is softer when she speaks again. “Just wanted to check up on you.”

I ease my shoes off my feet and then gather them up under me, feeling settled somewhere deep inside me that doesn’t get much attention. I don’t know why I’ve been avoiding her calls, I should’ve known hearing from her would make me feel better. But then again, I’ve never been good at recognising that for myself.

“I ain’t up to much,” I murmur, pillowing my cheek to my shoulder to watch Sheba grooming her belly. Sat on the dining room chair Eugene had taken just a few hours ago. I bet she’s pleased she has all her own space back. “How about you?”

“Ugh,” she says, and laughs. “Forgot to put Neal’s lunch in his bag this morning, so I’m off to do the walk of shame to drop it off at school.”

I grin to myself, her voice settling over me like an old, comfortable blanket. “Yeah?” I murmur, and listen to her indicator tick, listen to her rings click against the steering wheel. I should ask her about that last holiday, I should ask her if she’s been dreaming of me like I’ve been of her. I should tell her about Eugene, about therapy, catch her up on everything that’s been happening with me since we last spoke, but I can’t bring myself to inject reality into this just yet. Instead I pillow my head on the back of the sofa, curled around my knees, and ask her, “How’s your week been?”

“Well, Jesus, Neal gave me a goddamn cold a week ago…” she begins, and I think of evenings on her porch, I think of doing rather than just wanting. 

We talk for an hour, and I know that without looking because when I drop my phone from my face, there’s a text from Eugene waiting for me. The side of my face is hot from my sister’s soft voice beaming into me, and I cradle it in one hand as I swipe to view his text, and smile. 

_just got home. feels weird to be back in my own place and not looking at those walls of yours. i miss sheba_

Slowly, I type back, _she doesn’t miss you_. And then, as an afterthought, I add, _but i do_.

_miss you too_ , Eugene fires back, as easy as that. My hot face feels even hotter. Elton John is still crooning up through the floorboards at me, and for once I feel surrounded on all sides by people who have my back. 

I go to the freezer. My hand closes around the ice-cold glass bottle in there, and at the touch I see some alternate reality flood out in front of me. 

Me, pouring myself a measure of vodka. Tiny. Less than they’d even give me at a bar, I know. A single, a light single, just barely a finger’s worth of vodka swilling around in the bottom of the glass. Cola on top. And then once I pour the Cola in it’ll start to feel a little less scary; if anyone saw me through the front windows they wouldn’t even know about that less-than-a-single-shot measure all mixed up in the soda. I see myself drink it. I see myself pour another. Cola on top. And I drink that one too, stood at my kitchen counter with all my muscles tight and locked like they are right now in the cold of the freezer. Fist clenched like it’s bad medicine that I’m just forcing myself through to get to being well again. It reminds me of — well, never mind. I know the third drink I’d pour would be a little heavier; a Burgie-pour. The kinda pour that got me into this mess, though actually it feels pretty unfair to lay this all out on his doorstep. Like Burgie dug his fingers into my head and pinched off that little part of my brain that knows how to not be a useless fucking addict. Oh, I can practically see Jac’s scowl at that. She hates when I say shit like that, even if it is true, just hates how I speak to myself. _It’s not the be-all and end-all of you_ , she always says, as I nod along like a fucking bobblehead and pretend I can see where she’s coming from. _Don’t make it your whole self._ How can I not? 

The thing is with drinking is that it becomes mechanical after a certain point. I see myself relocating to the sofa, and the vodka losing it’s freezer-chill but what the fuck would I care? I know exactly what I’d be thinking. Something like: work tomorrow, shit. Office work, stupid fucking tweets, nic-breaks with Bill and trying to figure out a little joy now that Eugene has bounced. But that’d be my little joy. Right there, glass of vodka-Cola not even being set down long enough to make a condensation-wet ring on my coffee table. It’s been so long my tolerance would be shot, and I know that last time I drank it was so high that now it’d feel like a rug has been pulled out from under me. Still, I’d pour myself another one. Cigarette lit between my fingers like a permanent fixture. Room faraway and hazy like it hasn’t ever not been. That’s the kinda drunkenness I like, the kinda drunkenness I guess I miss so bad. Not the partying so much, not the drinking downstairs with Burgie and the regulars. Lone drinking. Everything gets so quiet that it’s pretty easy to let it all wash over you. Memories become toothless, thoughts become un-barbed. Like nothing can snag hold in the silky gooey membrane that alcohol wraps me up in. 

My main problem with drinking isn’t the drinking itself but the stopping. Like I said, it’s mechanical. And I know I wouldn’t be doing nothing; just smoking and just sitting staring at the middle distance, but if I know myself I know that as more vodka gets down my throat it just starts to feel _bad_. And then even worse because I know I won’t stop. And then even worse than that because with the knowledge that I’m not stopping comes the realisation that I started in the first place, that I ruined my fucking streak that I worked so hard to keep. What were those months of struggling for if I find myself right back where I was half a year ago? I’d feel like a waste, like an idiot, cherry of my cigarette into the belly of my forearm and I wouldn’t feel a thing. The sheets’ll be stuck to it in the morning. 

And then I’ll throw up. And the night will end quickly after that.

It feels so real because it is. Because it’s been so many nights of my life that they’ve all become one. Me and a glass and a bottle, a sofa, and a creeping, malignant sadness that grows on me through the night. I think of my sister’s voice. I think of Eugene’s face when he saw the vodka in the freezer. 

The cap clatters into the sink, metal on metal. And the vodka follows, that rubbing alcohol smell of it down the dark eye of the drain. The stink of in my nose, cleaning me from the inside out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading! and thank you to everyone who has left comments on this fic too, it's comforting to know that something that feels so personal to me can resonate with so many others :~) that's what art is about, babey! and i hope you all enjoy this final chapter too, and hope you're all keeping safe at the moment


End file.
